Chapter XXIII: Book II: The Control of the Stage (6)

To some extent the evidence of the accounts can be eked out by that of other records throwing a more direct light upon the responsibilities assumed by the civic authorities in regard to plays. Singularly interesting is the register of the Mayor's Court at Norwich, in which are recorded the attendances of players on their arrival in the town to submit their credentials and obtain leave for their performances.[956] The patent companies produced their letters patent in original or in exemplification, in addition to which the Court seems to have expected some instrument of deputation, if none of the men actually named in the document were present.[957] The nature of the evidence forthcoming from other companies is not so clearly specified, but no doubt it consisted of the warrant of appointment by their lord, and after 1581 of the confirmatory licence from the Master of the Revels. Worcester's men were in a difficulty at Leicester in 1583 because, although they could produce the warrant from their lord, their licence from the Master had been purloined by another company.[958] It was probably as a quite special privilege that, when Strange's and Sussex's men travelled in 1593, they carried with them letters of assistance from the Privy Council itself. It may be gathered from the terms of the Norwich entries that the Court regarded its own permission or 'licence' as essential before players were entitled to set up their 'bills' or give their performances within its jurisdiction. The lord's warrant might protect his servants from the penalties of vagabondage; but it was not necessarily accepted, in the provinces any more than in London, as overriding the traditional right of the municipal governments to control the entertainments which might have serious results both upon the morality and the order of their areas. On the other hand, even if the plays had been less popular than they were, the livery of the Queen or of a powerful noble was not a thing to be lightly flouted. Perhaps the difficulty was solved by taking the warrant at its face value as a courteous letter of recommendation, and letting the licence to play and the 'reward' stand as return courtesies from the corporation to their very good lord. This fiction, however, can hardly have been applicable to the terms in which the Master of the Revels may be supposed to have worded his licence, and still less to those of the royal patents, which claimed to give direct authority to play 'within anie town halls or moute halls or other conveniente places within the liberties and freedoms of any cittie, vniversitie, towne or boroughe whatsoever within our realmes and domynions'. The corporations were not very likely to act upon the advice attributed to the Lord Coke in 1606 that such licences from the Crown were _ultra vires_.[959] No doubt they remained the arbiters as to what places were 'conveniente'. They also prescribed times and seasons, forbidding plays at their discretion on Sunday[960] or at night,[961] or in Lent,[962] or during divine service,[963] and laying down for each company the number of days during which it was at liberty to perform, or the interval which must elapse between one visit and the next. At Norwich the number of days ranged from one to eight, sometimes one performance and sometimes two being allowed on each day. The royal signet warrants which came into use about 1616 authorized the companies holding them to stay fourteen days in any one town. Sometimes Dogberry and Verges found good reason for refusing leave to play. It was a season of plague or of social disturbance in the town.[964] In 1603 when the Admiral's men visited Canterbury, 'it was thought fit they should not play at all in regard that our late Queen was then ether very sick or dead as they supposed'. Or even if the public playing was allowed, the corporation might be too busy for a Mayor's play to be appropriate. In either event the players generally got their fee all the same, and the Chamberlain, if punctilious, entered it not as a 'reward' but as a 'gratuity', and noted in his book that the company 'did not playe'.[965] Certain indications show themselves here and there that the Puritan controversy had spread to the provinces, and even that the desire to have done with plays altogether was not wholly confined to London. As early as 1590 there was a dispute in the corporation of Maldon between an ex-bailiff of the town and certain colleagues whom he abused as 'a sort of precisians and Brownists' because they forbade a performance on a Sunday evening.[966] In 1596 the Chester corporation made an order for the suppression of plays, and fixed a 'gratuity' of 20_s._ for the Queen's men, and 6_s._ 8_d._ for those of any noble. But it does not seem that the resolution was persisted in, and in 1615 the city was still suffering from 'the common brute and scandal' of 'obscene and unlawfull plaies or tragedies', and did no more than bar them out from the Common Hall and confine them to the day-time.[967] At Hull too fines were enacted against citizens resorting to plays and landlords harbouring them in 1598.[968] The players did not always prove conformable to municipal discipline. Several cases are recorded at Norwich, in which companies played contrary to orders, and were punished by committal to prison, or by threats that their lord should be certified of their contempt, and that they should never more have reward of the city.[969] One of the mutinous companies in 1583 was Worcester's, who in the following year repeated their offence at Leicester, going 'with their drum and trumppytts thorowe the towne in contempt of Mr. Mayor' and using 'evyll and contemptyous words' of that dignitary, who had given them an angel (3_s._ 4_d._) towards their dinner. The threat of reporting them to their lord reduced them to submission, and after all they were allowed to play, and made a public apology to Mr. Mayor as a prologue.

The worst of travelling was that, after all the tramping of bad roads, and all the wrangling with jacks-in-office, there was but a scanty living to be made out of it, even with the aid of the few shillings to be picked up in the larger villages, from such a windfall as is described in _Ratseis Ghost_,[970] or from the generous hospitality of a friendly manor.[971] The competition was considerable, for in the provinces the London companies found rivals in the shape of other companies which rarely or never came to London at all, but were none the less substantial and permanent organizations. Thus Queen Elizabeth's men travelled for years between their last London appearance in 1594 and the end of the reign, and continued all the time to secure the exceptionally high rates of 'reward' which were due to the royal name. Other famous provincial companies, each of which can be traced through a period of years, were those of the Duchess of Suffolk (1548-63), and the Lords Mountjoy (1564-78), Stafford (1574-1604), Sheffield (1577-86), Berkeley (1578-1610), Chandos (1578-1610), Morley (1581-1602), Darcy (1591-1603), Mounteagle (1593-1616), Huntingdon (1597-1606), Evers (1600-13), and Dudley (1600-36). Some of these had a comparatively limited range; others covered the whole country. Their presence in the field, and that of many minor companies, must have made it difficult for the Londoners.[972] The charge of travelling, again, as Strange's men complained to the Privy Council about 1592, was intolerable, and the necessity for dividing the larger companies, so as to cover more ground, led to disorganization. Pembroke's men, when they travelled in 1593, could not save their charges, and had to pawn their apparel and return home. The years of plague and travellings were the lean years which sent the books of plays into the hands of the publishers.[973] And for a company to part with the books and garments that formed its stock in trade was a confession of failure.

The wanderings of English actors were by no means confined to England itself. They crossed the border to Scotland, where towards the end of the sixteenth century they incurred the hostility of the Kirk Sessions, which did not prevent James I from appointing one or more of them as Court comedians, and bringing them back with him in 1603 to figure in the lists of the patented royal companies.[974] Somewhat later they braved the Irish Channel, and are found at Youghal.[975] And on the Continent they ranged far and wide.[976] Notices of them in France, indeed, are rarer than might be expected, perhaps because of the barrier of religion, perhaps because the Italians had already occupied the ground, perhaps only because the archives have not been thoroughly searched. To Italy and to Spain they just penetrated. In northern Europe, on the other hand, in the Netherlands, in Germany, even in Denmark, Sweden, and Poland, they found a constant welcome, until their movements were checked by the outbreak of the Thirty Years' War in 1620. A pioneer company, which made its way from Leicester's head-quarters at Utrecht to the Courts of Copenhagen and Dresden in 1586, included members who afterwards became fellows of Shakespeare as Lord Chamberlain's men. The shifting relations of the numerous bands which followed them are beyond research, but the initiative in organizing the raids seems to have been largely taken by two men. One of these was Robert Browne, who paid not less than five visits abroad between 1590 and 1620, and appears to have had many associates, of whom the most important was John Green. The other was John Spencer, who first appears in 1604, and whose operations were probably quite independent of Browne's. The industry of German scholars has made it possible to trace in outline the stories of Spencer and of a group of companies owing their origin more or less directly to Browne. Their adventures were clearly much facilitated by the existence of numerous petty German courts, under cultivated rulers who were glad to take a troop of actors into their service for a year or two at a time, and then let them go for a while on their travels from one to another of the great towns. Conspicuous amongst such patrons were the Electors Joachim Frederick (1598-1608) and John Sigismund (1608-91) of Brandenburg, the Electors Christian I (1586-91), Christian II (1591-1611), and John George (1611-56) of Saxony, Henry Julius (1589-1613) Duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, and Maurice (1592-1627) Landgrave of Hesse-Cassel. Naturally, also, the actors made their way to Heidelberg, whither the Elector Palatine Frederick V brought his English bride in 1613. These were Protestant princes, but Catholic Germany, although less often visited, was not closed to the English, who found particular favour with the house of the Archduke Ferdinand of Styria, afterwards the Emperor Ferdinand II. Of the great cities of Germany the most hospitable to actors, so far as our knowledge goes, were Cologne, Strassburg, Ulm, Augsburg, Nuremberg, and above all Frankfort, where the two great marts or fairs held annually at Easter and in the autumn served as a rallying-point for travellers and entertainers of every species. The early successes of the English in Germany are reported by Fynes Moryson, who was at Frankfort for the autumn fair of 1592:

'Germany hath some fewe wandring Comeydians, more deseruing
pitty then prayse, for the serious parts are dully penned, and
worse acted, and the mirth they make is ridiculous, and nothing
lesse then witty (as I formerly haue shewed). So as I remember
that when some of our cast dispised stage players came out of
England into Germany, and played at Franckford in the tyme of
the Mart, hauing nether a complete number of Actours, nor any
good Appareil, nor any ornament of the Stage, yet the Germans,
not vnderstanding a worde they sayde, both men and women,
flocked wonderfully to see theire gesture and Action, rather
then heare them, speaking English which they vnderstoode not,
and pronowncing peeces and patches of English playes, which my
selfe and some English men there present could not heare
without great wearysomenes. Yea my selfe comming from
Franckford in the company of some cheefe marchants Dutch and
Flemish, heard them often bragg of the good markett they had
made, only condoling that they had not the leasure to heare the
English players.'

In the Netherlands the English players, according to Moryson, brought themselves into a singular difficulty. Here, too, was no native stage:

'For Commedians, they litle practise that Arte, and are the
poorest Actours that can be imagined, as my selfe did see when
the Citty of Getrudenberg being taken by them from the
Spanyards, they made bonsfyers and publikely at Leyden
represented that action in a play, so rudely as the poore
Artizans of England would haue both penned and acted it much
better. So as at the same tyme when some cast players of
England came into those partes, the people not vnderstanding
what they sayd, only for theere action followed them with
wonderfull concourse, yea many young virgines fell in loue with
some of the players, and followed them from citty to citty,
till the magistrates were forced to forbid them to play any
more.'[977]

Moryson's account finds confirmation in the praise lavished upon English acting by German writers, such as Erhard Cellius in 1605, Joannes Rhenanus about 1610, and Daniel von Wensin in 1613.[978] Undoubtedly the German stage, which had been slow to develop on professional lines, owed a great impetus to the invasions. Germans attached themselves to the English companies, and in course of time imitated the English methods in companies of their own. The English plays served as models for German dramatists, of whom Duke Henry Julius of Brunswick and Jacob Ayrer of Nuremberg were the best known.[979] On the other hand, the invaders themselves became denizened, at any rate to the extent of learning to give their performances in the German tongue. Moryson found Browne's company handicapped by their use of English at Frankfort in 1592. A Münster chronicler tells us that an anonymous company which visited his town in 1601 still played 'in ihrer engelschen Sprache', but that between the acts the clown amused the audience with 'bôtze und geckerie' in German.[980] In 1605 actors who petition for leave to appear at the Frankfort fair advertise their intention to give their comedies and tragedies 'in hochteutscher sprache', and there can be little doubt that, whatever may have been the case in Anglomaniac courts, theirs was the practice which ultimately prevailed in the cities.[981] Such portions of the repertories of the English actors as have been preserved are without exception in German. They are of singularly little literary value, fully bearing out Moryson's description of them as no more than 'peeces and patches' of English plays. But occasionally one of them possesses a critical interest as representing a play now lost or some earlier version of its model than that extant in an English text. In addition to actual plays, enough lists of performances are upon record to give a fair notion of the range of the travelling repertories. Both recent productions of the London stage and more old-fashioned pieces were drawn upon for adaptation. The choice was doubtless determined by the availability of prompter's copies or printed texts, as the case might be, when a company was collecting a stock-in-trade for its adventure. Sometimes variety was obtained by using the experiments of a German dramatist, or one of those scriptural comedies, _Susanna and the Elders_, _The Prodigal Son_, _Dives and Lazarus_, which had been the delight of the German, even more than the English, Renaissance.

The most obvious thing about the life of the English actor on the road in Germany is that it was uncommonly like his life on the road in England. Perhaps this is hardly surprising when it is borne in mind that, as already pointed out, the player away from his permanent theatre reverted to the status of the minstrel, and that throughout the ages the minstrel had been cosmopolitan. That in a land of alien speech, even more than at home, the strict arts of comedy and tragedy had to be eked out with music and buffoonery and acrobatics goes without saying. Even as late as 1614 and at the court of Berlin the terms on which actors were engaged bound them to render service 'mit Springen, Spielen und anderer Kurzweil', as their lord might require.[982] Away from court, in Germany as in England, they were mainly dependent upon the goodwill of the civic magistrates, to whom on approaching each town they addressed elaborate petitions, of which many are preserved, in which they recited their own merits, and made play with the names of any princes whose servants they were entitled to call themselves, or whose recommendation some successful display had enabled them to gain. There was always the chance that, on the strength of plague or some other pretext, they might be refused admission altogether. At the best, they must expect to have the length of their stay, the days and hours of their performances, the sums they might charge for standing-room and seats, most thoughtfully and minutely regulated for them. And when all the preliminaries were gone through, and the Rathaus or an inn-yard put at their disposal, and the creaking boards set up, and the tattered frippery extracted from the hamper, it might perhaps after all, as at Brunswick in 1614, be a case of 'kein Volk' and the Council might give them a thaler out of charity and send them on their way.[983] In Germany too, as in England, they had to make their account with the wise, to whom their performances were folly, and the 'unco' guid', to whom they were an offence.[984] Evidently they were not always discreet in their choice of themes. At Elbing in 1605 a company received a gratification of twenty thalers for a performance before the Council; and the record continues, '... daneben aber auch ihnen zu untersagen, dass sie nunmehr zu agiren aufhören sollen in Anmerkung, dass sie gestern in der Comödie schandbare Sachen fürgebracht'.[985] Even princes sometimes got into trouble by encouraging these foreigners of doubtful respectability. There was glee in Cassel when Landgrave Maurice decided to disband the 'verfluchten' English in 1602. Possibly in this case it was the taxpayer rather than the Puritan who felt relief; but when the Duke of Pommern-Wolgast and his mother allowed the Schlosskirche at Lötz to be used for a performance in 1606 they brought upon themselves a shower of letters from Hofprediger Gregorius Hagius, which precisely re-echo the familiar English diatribes of Stephen Gosson and John Rainolds.[986] Presumably the whole business paid its way, or Browne would not have gone over four or five times or Spencer spent fifteen years in the country. A recent investigator, who has made a far more elaborate analysis of all the financial material than I have room for, calculates that, what with court salaries, and what with admission fees to public performances at the rate of about three kreuzers or less than a penny a head, an actor might hope to make on the average about £60 a year.[987] This was enough to live upon, even if, as was sometimes the case, wife and children accompanied the expedition. It seemed attractive enough to poor Richard Jones, who was making at home 'some tymes a shillinge a day and some tymes nothinge'. But it hardly bears out the statement of Erhard Cellius that the English returned home 'auro et argento onusti'. And in fact those who essayed a career in Germany were the failures of London. 'Some of our cast dispised stage players', Moryson calls them, and many years later, in 1625, the same tale is told by the words put into the mouths of actors in _The Run-away's Answer_: 'We can be bankrupts on this side and gentlemen of a company beyond the sea: we burst at London, and are pieced up at Rotterdam.'[988] There were, indeed, those who made their fortunes abroad, but they were those who, like Thomas Sackville, forsook the stage and devoted their energies to an honest trade.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 879: Murray, ii. 77, gives records of seventy-nine 'Lesser Men's Companies', many of which appear at one town only, while all have a narrow range. Naturally the names of the great nobles carried weight over a wider area. The players in _Ratseis Ghost_ (Halliwell-Phillipps, i. 326) 'denied their owne Lord and Maister, and used another Noblemans name'.]

[Footnote 880: The showman of the royal ape in Taylor's _Wit and Mirth_ (cf. p. 267) wears 'a brooch in his hat, like a tooth drawer, with a Rose and Crowne, and two letters'.]

[Footnote 881: Harington, _Metamorphosis of Ajax_ (1596), 135, 'I will neither end with sermon nor with prayer, lest some wags liken me to my L. (____) players, who when they have ended a bawdy comedy, as though that were a preparative to devotion, kneel down solemnly, and pray all the company to pray with them for their good Lord and master'; _A Mad World, my Masters_, v. ii. 200, 'This shows like kneeling after the play; I praying for my good lord Owemuch and his good countess, our honourable lady and mistress'. This prayer might be combined with one for the Sovereign and estates; cf. chh. xviii, xxii.]

[Footnote 882: Cf. ch. xiii (Interluders).]

[Footnote 883: _R. O. Lord Chamberlain's Records_, ii. 4 (4).]

[Footnote 884: _N. S. S. Trans._ (1877-9), 15*, from _Lord Chamberlain's Records_, vol. 58_a_, now ii. 4 (5).]

[Footnote 885: Sullivan, 250; C. C. Stopes in _Sh.-Jahrbuch_, xlvi. 92; from _Lord Chamberlain's Records_, ii. 48; v. 92, 93. I am not sure whether the velvet was for a 'cap' or a 'cape'.]

[Footnote 886: Sullivan, 253; cf. vol. i, p. 52.]

[Footnote 887: Stopes (_supra_). I find a confirmatory note to a Household list of 1641 in _Lord Chamberlain's Records_, iii. 1, 'Note that _th_e Companyes of Players under the Titles of the Kings, Queenes, Qu_eene_ of Bohemia, Prince & Duke of Yorke are all of them sworne Groomes of the Chamber in ord_inary_ w_i_thout fee'. I cannot accept Miss Sullivan's theory that 'without fee' means that the players did not have to buy their places.]

[Footnote 888: Cf. App. C, Nos. xvii, xxxi.]

[Footnote 889: Platter in 1599 (cf. ch. xvi, introd.) says that plays were given 'alle tag vmb 2 vhren nach mittag'. T. S. Graves, in _E. S._ xlvii. 66, argues in favour of occasional night performances, and is answered by W. J. Lawrence in _E. S._ xlviii. 213. Whatever may have been done before 1574 or thereabouts, I find no later evidence which is not to be explained either by private performances or by a loose use of 'night' for the evening hour at which plays terminated in winter. Nor can I go with Lawrence in supposing an exception for Sunday. The Southwark play at 8 p.m. on Sunday, 12 June 1592, cannot have been at a regular theatre, for there was none within the Lord Mayor's jurisdiction. The allusion in Crosse's _Vertue's Commonwealth_ (1603) can quite well be to private plays (cf. App. C), and Henslowe's entry (i. 83) of a loan of 30_s._ 'when they fyrst played Dido at nyght', on Sunday, 8 Jan. 1598, only suggests to me the payment by Henslowe of the shot for a supper after the first performance. Or it may have been a private performance, for Henslowe does not appear (_vide infra_) to have opened the Rose on Sundays.]

[Footnote 890: Cf. App. D, No. xv (1564), 'now daylye, but speciallye on holydayes'; No. xvi (1569), 'on the Saboth dayes and other solempne feastes commaunded by the church to be kept holy'; No. xvii (1571), 'vpon sondaies, holly daies, or other daie of the weke, or ells at night'; No. xxxii (1574), 'on sonndaies and holly dayes, at which tymes such playes weare chefelye vsed'; App. C, No. xxii (1579), 'These because they are allowed to play euery Sunday, make iiii or v Sundayes at least euery weeke'.]

[Footnote 891: There was a disorder at the Theatre on Sunday, 10 April 1580, but by July 1581 the Lord Mayor had made an order against Sunday plays, which Berkeley's men disregarded. The Privy Council letter of 3 Dec. 1581 to the City accepts the exclusion of Sunday. Gosson, _Playes Confuted_ (1582), 167, and Field (Jan. 1583), C. iii, acknowledge the change of day. When therefore Stubbes (1 March 1583), 137, criticizes Sunday plays, he must have the suburbs in mind. Paris Garden fell on Sunday, 13 Jan. 1583. On 3 July 1583 the Lord Mayor told the Privy Council that Sunday baitings were resumed. The documents of the 1584 controversy, however, state that as a result of the accident, letters were obtained to banish plays (and doubtless also baiting) 'in the places nere London' on the Sabbath days. Whetstone (1584) also alludes to a 'reforme' by the 'magistrate' in this matter.]

[Footnote 892: Henslowe, ii. 324.]

[Footnote 893: Cf. Middleton, _A Mad World, my Masters_ (1608), I. i. 38, 'Tis Lent in your cheeks; the flag's down'; T. Earle, _Microcosmography_, char. 64, of a player, 'Shrove-tuesday hee feares as much as the bawdes, and Lent is more damage to him then the butcher'.]

[Footnote 894: _Variorum_, iii. 65, from Sir Henry Herbert's papers, which also record a similar payment in 1618 'for toleration in the holydays'. Herbert himself sold similar indulgences and in a list of customary Revels fees drawn up in 1662 includes £3 'for Lent fee', together with £3 'for Christmasse fee' (_Variorum_, iii. 266). Prynne, _Histriomastix_ (1633), 784, notes the custom of suppressing plays 'in Lent, till now of late'.]

[Footnote 895: Cf. ch. xiii (Lady Elizabeth's). About 1617 Prince Charles's men were complaining to Alleyn that 'intemperate Mr. Meade' had taken 'the day from vs which by course was ours'.]

[Footnote 896: By 1574 the City had offers to farm their licensing rights 'to the relefe of the poore in the hospitalles'; but their regulations of Dec. 1574 provide for direct contributions to the poor and sick by holders of licences for playing-places. A weekly subsidy to the poor from every stage is suggested by Walsingham's correspondent of 1587. Hunsdon, in asking for the use of the Cross Keys in 1594, promised that his men would 'be contributories to the poore of the parishe where they plaie accordinge to their habilities'. In 1600 the Southwark Vestry were negotiating with the players for tithes and contributions for the poor on the basis of an 'order taken before my lords of Canterbury and London and the Master of the Revels'. In the same year the inhabitants of Finsbury recite the 'very liberall porcion' of money promised weekly for the relief of the poor as one of their grounds for assenting to the building of the Fortune. The accounts of the overseers of Paris Garden between 1611 and 1621 show varying sums, amounting to about £4 or £5 a year, as received during several years from the players at the Swan.]

[Footnote 897: The Middlesex records for 1616 show the Queen's men at the Red Bull as in arrear for their contribution, 'being taxed by the bench 40_s._ the yeare by theire own consentes'.]

[Footnote 898: Cf. ch. viii.]

[Footnote 899: As far back as 1549 the City had appointed two Secondaries of the Compters to license plays; but this arrangement doubtless terminated when the King and Council assumed the function; cf. ch. ix. In 1572 the Council were pressing the City to appoint 'discreet persons' for the purpose, and in 1574 suggested the suitability of one Mr. Holmes. But the City, who claimed to have had profitable offers to farm the licensing, repeated a former refusal to commit it to any private person. The regulations of 1574 provide for the appointment by the Lord Mayor and Aldermen of persons to peruse and allow plays. But the Council are still urging, and the City promising, the appointment of licensers in 1582.]

[Footnote 900: Cf. ch. iii.]

[Footnote 901: The unauthorized company which stole this licence (cf. ch. xiii, s.v. Worcester's) is probably that which appeared as the Master of the Revels' players at Ludlow on 7 Dec. 1583 and at Bath and Gloucester in 1583-4 (Murray, ii. 201, 282, 325). I do not think that Tilney himself had a company. His predecessor had. Plomer (_3 Library_, ix. 252) notes a Canterbury payment, omitted by Murray, in 1569-70, to 'Syr Thomas Bernars [? Benger's] players, Master of the Quenes Majesties Revells'. But this was before the Act of 1572.]

[Footnote 902: Possibly the Southwark order for tithes from players, taken before 'my lords of Canterbury and London and the Master of the Revels' about 1600, implies some continuance of the commission. The issue of licences, both for the performance and after 1607 for the printing of plays, 'under the hand of' the Master (cf. ch. xxii), does not exclude the possibility of his acting on the report of an expert assessor, and one is tempted to conjecture that this may have been the position of Segar, who sometimes licensed for the press as deputy to Buck. But it is clear from passages in Sir Henry Herbert's office-book (_Variorum_, iii. 229-42) that he at least personally read the 'books' of plays.]

[Footnote 903: Henslowe, ii. 113, where Dr. Greg _inter alia_ disposes of Mr. Fleay's theory that some of the fees entered in the _Diary_ are for licences authorizing the publication, not the performance, of plays.]

[Footnote 904: Cf. App. D, No. cliv.]

[Footnote 905: The intruding company of 1598 had not been 'bound' to the Master. The Master's licence to Worcester's men in 1583 is described as an 'indenture of lycense', and the players were 'bound to the orders prescribed by the said Edmund Tyllneye'. On 2 Jan. 1595 Henslowe paid the Master £10 'in full payment of a bonde of one hundreth powndes' (Henslowe, i. 39). This looks as if he had forfeited a recognizance.]

[Footnote 906: The licence to the Queen's Revels (1604) is an exception. Here there is no reference to the Master and the allowance of plays is committed to Samuel Daniel 'whome her pleasure is to appoynt for that purpose'. Nor is the Master mentioned in the unexecuted draft (_c._ 1604) for the Queen's men. Probably the reason is to be found in the existence of a separate Chamberlain for the Queen's Household. The Master of the Revels was of course an officer of the King's Lord Chamberlain. The Master's rights are reserved in the patent actually issued to the Queen's men in 1609. Daniel's licensing had been far from a success; cf. p. 326. Oddly enough, whatever Daniel's legal rights, it appears from his exculpation of his _Philotas_ (q.v.) that the Master did in fact 'peruse' that play.]

[Footnote 907: A Chamberlain's warrant of 20 Nov. 1622 requires a licence from the Master for any travellers who 'shall shewe or present any play shew motion feats of actiuity and sights whatsoeuer' (Murray, ii. 352). This was motived by certain irregular licences procured 'both from the Kings Maiestie and also from diuerse noblemen'. The commission of 1581 is wide enough to cover all 'shewes'; possibly the actual practice was extended when the Act of 1604 restricted the protection of noblemen to players of interludes proper--a restriction evidently still imperfectly observed in 1622. The earliest licence for a non-dramatic show on record is one of date earlier than 5 Oct. 1605 to John Watson, ironmonger, 'to shewe two beasts called Babonnes' (Murray, ii. 338; cf. ch. xxiv, s.v. _Sir G. Goosecap_), and this was a royal warrant, perhaps under the signet. But on 6 Sept. 1610 Buck issued a licence to 'shew a strange lion, brought to do strange things, as turning an ox to be roasted, &c.' (_S. P. D. Jac. I_, lvii. 45), and the keeper of a 'motion' in _Bartholomew Fair_ (1614), V. 5, 18, says, 'I have the Master of the _Reuell's_ hand for it'. Later examples of signet warrants for shows are in Murray, ii. 342, and of licences from the Master in Murray, ii. 351 sqq., and Herbert, 46; cf. Gildersleeve, 64, 72.]

[Footnote 908: Cf. ch. xxii. Herbert noted at the Restoration (_Dramatic Records_, 96), 'Severall playes allowed by Mister Tilney in 1598. As Sir William Longsword allowed to be acted in 1598, The Fair Maid of London. Richard Cor de Lyon. See the Bookes.']

[Footnote 909: The manuscript of _The Honest Man's Fortune_ (1613) has some censorial notes and an allowance at the end of the book by Herbert on the occasion of a revival in 1625. Of later manuscripts, that of _Sir John Van Olden Barnevelt_ (Bullen, _O. E. P._ ii. 101) has corrections by Herbert, but no allowance, and that of Massinger's _Believe As You List_ (facs. in _T. F. T._) is a second draft, prepared to meet criticisms by Herbert, and allowed by him; cf. Gildersleeve, 114, 123.]

[Footnote 910: The extent to which Tilney's handiwork is apparent in the text is a matter of great palaeographical difficulty fully studied by Dr. Greg, who takes the view that the insertions and many of the corrections in the manuscript were made before it was submitted to Tilney, and are not an attempt to carry out the revision directed by him. If so, he was very easy-going as regards willingness to peruse a most disorderly text.]

[Footnote 911: Herbert (_Variorum_, iii. 235) records a conversation between Charles I and himself about the language of Davenant's _Wits_, at the end of which he noted in his office-book, 'The Kinge is pleased to take faith, death, slight, for asseverations and no oaths, to which I doe humbly submit as my masters judgment; but under favour conceive them to be oaths, and enter them here, to declare my opinion and submission'. I also find Herbert occasionally expurgating 'obsceanes' and 'ribaldry' from plays (_Variorum_, iii. 208, 232, 241). But it is obvious from extant texts that neither he nor his predecessors made any attempt to enforce a high standard of decency.]

[Footnote 912: R. Whyte to Sir R. Sidney on 26 Oct. 1599 (_Sydney Papers_, ii. 136), 'Two daies agoe, the ouerthrow of _Turnholt_, was acted vpon a Stage, and all your Names vsed that were at yt; especially _Sir Fra. Veres_, and he that plaid that Part gott a Beard resembling his, and a Watchet Sattin Doublett, with Hose trimd with Siluer Lace. You was also introduced, Killing, Slaying, and Overthrowing the _Spaniards_, and honorable Mention made of your Service, in seconding _Sir Francis Vere_, being engaged'. Turnhout was taken from the Spanish by Count Maurice of Nassau, with the help of an English contingent, on 24 Jan. 1598.]

[Footnote 913: Winwood to Cecil from Paris on 7 July 1602 (Winwood, i. 425), 'Upon Thursday last, certain Italian comedians did set up upon the corners of the passages in this towne that that afternoone they would play _l'Histoire Angloise contre la Roine d'Angleterre_'. Winwood protested and secured an inhibition, but 'It was objected to me before the Counsaile by some Standers by, that the Death of the Duke of Guise hath ben plaied at London; which I answered was never done in the life of the last King; and sence, by some others, that the Massacre of St. Bartholomews hath ben publickly acted, and this King represented upon the stage'. The play introducing Henri IV was probably a revival by the Admiral's men of Marlowe's _Massacre at Paris_, for which Henslowe was making advances in Nov. 1601 and Jan. 1602; cf. Bk. III. Evidently Elizabeth got as good as she gave on the stage. On 2 June 1598 Dr. Fletcher describes to Sir R. Cecil (_Hatfield MSS._ viii. 190) a recent dumb show at Brussels in which she was mocked at. On 7 June 1598 one Mr. Hungerford describes to Essex (_Hatfield MSS._ viii. 197) another, or perhaps the same, show at Antwerp, in which also she appeared. In Oct. 1607 Walter Yonge records in his _Diary_ (Camden Soc.), 15, a play at the Jesuit College of Lyons. It lasted two days, and employed 100 actors. An abbess played the Virgin. Calvin, Luther, and others 'with our late good Queen Elizabeth, condemned', were represented. The episodes included 'the meritorious deed intended of gunpowder; the conspiracy of Babington, and others, against Queen Elizabeth; all which were rewarded with the joys of Paradise'. Yonge adds that a storm broke, and 'the three resembling the Trinity, and the abbess were stricken with the hand of the Lord, and it was never known what became of them'. He says that books were printed about the incident; there are in fact no less than five recorded in Arber, iii. 361-4 (cf. App. M).]

[Footnote 914: Cf. ch. viii. On 20 July 1586 the Venetian ambassador in Spain reported (_V. P._ viii. 182) Philip's resentment at 'the masquerades and comedies which the Queen of England orders to be acted at his expense. His Majesty has received a summary of one of these which was lately represented, in which all sorts of evil is spoken of the Pope, the Catholic religion, and the King, who is accused of spending all his time in the Escurial with the monks of St. Jerome, attending only to his buildings, and a hundred other insolences which I refrain from sending to your Serenity'. This is confirmed by Collier, i. 279, from a manuscript _Declaration of the True Causes of the Great Troubles supposed to be Intended against the Realm of England_ (1592). On 15 April 1598 George Nicolson wrote from Edinburgh to Burghley (_Sc. P._ ii. 749), 'It is regretted that the comedians of London should scorn the king and the people of this land in their play; and it is wished that the matter should be speedily amended lest the king and the country be stirred to anger'.]

[Footnote 915: Cf. ch. viii.]

[Footnote 916: Cf. App. C, No. xlv.]

[Footnote 917: _S. P. F._ xi. 567. Cecilia complained to her brother, King John of Sweden, 'Another time she being bidden to see a comedy played, there was a black man brought in, and as he was of an evil favoured countenance, so was he in like manner full of lewd, spiteful and scornful words, which she said represented the marquis, her husband'.]

[Footnote 918: Burn, 153, notes from _Lansd. MS._ 232, that the Star Chamber inflicted a severe punishment for the impersonation of Leicester in a play.]

[Footnote 919: Bacon (Spedding, ix. 177), _The Proceedings of the Earl of Essex_.]

[Footnote 920: _S. P. D. Eliz._ cclxxiv. 138.]

[Footnote 921: Cf. ch. xiii (Chamberlain's).]

[Footnote 922: It is probably unnecessary to take literally Arabella Stuart's letter of 16 Feb. 1603 to Edward Talbot (Bradley, _Arabella Stuart_, i. 128; ii. 119), 'I am as unjustly accused of contriving a comedy, as you (on my conscience) a tragedy'.]

[Footnote 923: Von Raumer, ii. 206.]

[Footnote 924: Winwood, ii. 54. Furnivall, _Stubbes_, 79*, tried in vain to identify a manuscript tract on the abusive attacks of players stated by Haslewood in _Gentleman's Magazine_ (1816), lxxxvi. 1. 205, to be in the British Museum. Possibly it was _Sloane MS._ 3543, ff. 19ᵛ, 49, a _Treatise Apologeticall for Huntinge_, which refers to the 'taxation' of James on the stage for his love of sport; cf. R. Simpson in _N. S. S. Trans._ (1874), 375, and E. J. L. Scott in _Athenaeum_ (1896), i. 756.]

[Footnote 925: Cf. ch. xii (Chapel).]

[Footnote 926: Sir Edward Conway to the Privy Council, 12 Aug. 1624 (Chalmers, _Apology_, 500, from _S. P. D. Charles I_, clxxi. 39), 'His Majesty remembers well there was a commandment and restraint given against the representing of any modern Christian Kings in those stage-plays'. This was written about the performance of Middleton's _A Game of Chess_, reflecting on the Spanish policy of James I, by the King's men; cf. _M. S. C._ i. 379. Other post-Shakespearian indiscretions were a performance of a play on the Marquis D'Ancre by an unnamed company in 1617 (_M. S. C._ i. 376), and one of _Sir John Van Olden Barnavelt_ by the King's men in 1619 (Bullen, _O. E. P._ iv. 381, from _S. P. D. James_ cx. 37); cf. Gildersleeve, 113.]

[Footnote 927: This work is not directly concerned with the literary content of stage-plays. But I may be allowed to express the opinion that the search for the 'topical' in Elizabethan drama has been pushed beyond the limits of good sense. Thus I agree with P. W. Long, _The Purport of Lyly's Endimion_ (_M. L. A._ xxiv. 164), that there is little ground for the elaborate theories of a dramatization of Elizabeth's personal amours propounded successively by N. J. Halpin, _Oberon's Vision_ (_Sh. Soc._ 1843), G. P. Baker, _Lyly's Endymion_ (1894), xli, and R. W. Bond, _Works of Lyly_ (1902), iii. 81. Similarly the conjectures of R. Simpson in his _School of Shakespeare_ (1878) and elsewhere, and of Fleay, and of most of the writers, other than Small, on the 'war of the theatres' require handling with the utmost caution.]

[Footnote 928: Winwood, ii. 41.]

[Footnote 929: Gildersleeve, 108, from _Hist. MSS._ iii. 57.]

[Footnote 930: _7 N. Q._ iii. 126; _Hist. MSS._ iii. 62; _S. P. D. Jac. I_, lxxvii. 58 (John Chamberlain to Sir Dudley Carleton); Burn, 78, from _Harl. MS._ 1227. Yorke was fined and imprisoned with his wife and brothers, 'pur admittinge de certeigne comon players (vizᵗ) les Simpsons de player en son meason un enterlude in q. la fuit disputation perenter Popish preist et English minister et le preist est de convince le minister in argument et le weapon de le minister esteant le bible et le preist le crosse et le Diabole fuit counterfeit la de prender le English minister et son Angle prist le preist per q. enterlude le religion ore profeste fuit grandment scandall et pluss del audience fueront recusants.... Le cheife Justice [Coke?] dit q. players de enterludes sont Rogues per le statute ... et le very bringing de religion sur le stage est libell.' On the career of the Simpsons, cf. ch. ix. The actual offence may have been some years earlier than the Star Chamber sitting of 1614, for Devon, 261, records a payment to the Keeper of the Gatehouse at Westminster for the diet of Lady Julian, wife of Sir John Yorke, as a prisoner from 5 Nov. 1611 to 13 Oct. 1613. The Yorkes were not of those who learn by experience, for in 1628 the Star Chamber sentenced Christopher Malloy for playing the devil in a performance at Sir John Yorke's house in Yorkshire, in which part he carried King James on his back to hell, and alleged that all Protestants were damned (Burn, 119).]

[Footnote 931: Dekker, _Work for Armourers_ (1609, _Works_, iv. 96), 'Tearme times, when the Twopeny Clients and Peny Stinkards swarme together to heere the Stagerites'.]

[Footnote 932: Dekker, _The Dead Tearme_ (1608, _Works_, iv. 22), of Bartholomewtide, 'when thou (O thou beautifull, but bewitching Citty) ... allurest people from all the corners of the land, to throng in heapes, at thy Fayres and thy Theators'.]

[Footnote 933: Dekker, _Seven Deadly Sins of London_ (1606, _Works_, ii. 52), 'The players prayd for his [Sloth's] comming: they lost nothing by it, the comming in of tenne Embassadors was never so sweete to them, as this our sinne was: their houses smoakt every after noone with Stinkards who were so glewed together in crowdes with the steames of strong breath, that when they came foorth, their faces lookt as if they had beene per-boyld'.]

[Footnote 934: Cf. App. D, Nos. cxxxi, cli.]

[Footnote 935: Cf. App. E.]

[Footnote 936: The full tables are in Murray, ii. 181.]

[Footnote 937: _Your Five Gallants_ (1607), iv. 2. 30, 'If the bill down rise to above thirty, here's no place for players' (cf. App. E, s. a. 1605); _Ram Alley_ (1607-8), iv. 1, 'I dwindle as a new player does at a plague bill certefied forty'. Thorndike, _Influence of Beaumont and Fletcher upon Shakespeare_, 16, doubts whether the theatres can in fact have been wholly closed from Aug. 1608 to Dec. 1609, when the bill was almost continuously over 40. I think that Murray, ii. 175, sufficiently answers some of his points, but in _Shakespeare's Theater_, 241, he cites _Keysar v. Burbage_ (cf. ch. xii, s.v. Chapel) as evidence that the King's played at Blackfriars during the plague season of 1609. Both disputants seem to have overlooked the special payments to the King's men (App. B) for private practice before the Christmases of 1608-9 and 1609-10. It is possible that they were allowed, in spite of a general restraint, to use the Blackfriars for this purpose, and even admit a select audience. If a similar relaxation was given to the Revels at Whitefriars, the dating of _Epicoene_ in' 1609' would be explained. I do not agree with Murray that it is likely to have been produced in the provinces. After all, the plague bill was well under 40 by 7 Dec. 1609, although it went up to 39 again on 28 Dec.]

[Footnote 938: In 1574, a restraint covers 10 miles from the city; in 1581 (a civic precept), 2 miles; in 1593, 7 miles; in 1594, 5 miles; in 1597, 3 miles.]

[Footnote 939: Cf. App. D, Nos. lxxii, lxxv, and the use of the Curtain as an 'easer' to the Theatre (ch. xvi); also the relations of the Admiral's and Strange's during 1589-94.]

[Footnote 940: Strange's men petitioned _c._ 1592 (App. D, No. xcii), 'oure Companie is greate, and thearbie our chardge intollerable, in travellinge the Countrie, and the contynuance thereof wilbe a meane to bringe vs to division and seperacion'. My impression is that, when they did have to travel in 1592 or 1593, Pembroke's (cf. ch. xiii) budded off from them. Their own travelling warrant was for 6 men, but this does not exclude hirelings. The provincial records do not give much evidence as to the actual size of travelling companies. The strength of seven companies which visited Southampton in 1576-7 (Murray, ii. 396) ranged from 6 to 12. I incline to agree with Murray and W. J. Lawrence (_T. L. S._, 21 Aug. 1919) that the average may be put at about 10 for the latter part of the sixteenth century and that it grew in the seventeenth. A Lord Chamberlain's licence of 1621 (Murray, ii. 192) sets a limit of 18. Probably 10 men, duplicating parts, could play many of the London plays without alteration, but obviously not the more spectacular ones.]

[Footnote 941: Dekker, _The Wonderfull Yeare_ (1603, _Works_, i. 100), 'The worst players Boy stood vpon his good parts, swearing tragicall and busking oathes, that how vilainously soeuer he randed, or what bad and vnlawfull action soeuer he entred into, he would in despite of his honest audience be halfe a sharer (at leaste) at home, or else strowle (thats to say trauell) with some notorious wicked floundring company abroad'; _News from Hell_ (1606, _Works_, ii. 146), 'a companie of country players, ... that with strowling were brought to deaths door'; _Belman of London_ (1608, _Works_, iii. 81), 'Nor Players they bee, who out of an ambition to weare the best Ierkin (in a Strowling company) or to Act great Parts, forsake the stately and our more than Romaine Cittie Stages, to trauel vpon the hard hoofe from village to village for chees & butter-milke'; _Lanthorne and Candlelight_ (1608, _Works_, iii. 255), 'Strowlers; a proper name given to country players that (without socks) trotte from towne to towne vpon the hard hoofe'; _The Raven's Almanac_ (1609, _Works_, iv. 196), 'Players, by reason they shal have a hard winter, and must travell on the hoofe, will lye sucking there for pence and twopences, like young pigges at a sow newly farrowed'.]

[Footnote 942: 'Paid to the plaiers with the waggon' (Exeter, 1576-7); 'Misdemeanoure done in the towne vppon misusage of a wagon or coache of the Lo. Bartlettes [Berkeley's] players' (Faversham, 1596-7); Dekker, _Satiromastix_, 1522, of Horace-Jonson, 'Thou hast forgot how thou amblest (in leather pilch) by a play-wagon, in the high way'; cf. ch. xi.]

[Footnote 943: R. W., _Mount Tabor_, 110 (repr. Harrison, iv. 355), _Upon a Stage-play which I saw when I was a child_. The play was the morality of _The Castle of Security_; cf. _Mediaeval Stage_, ii. 189.]

[Footnote 944: Cf. _Bibl. Note_ to ch. xii.]

[Footnote 945: 'For lynks to give light in the euenyng' (Bristol, 1577); 'for candells and torches then spent' (Canterbury, 1574); 'for the skafowld' (Exeter, 1604-5); 'to make a scaffolde in the Bothall' (Gloucester, 1559-60, with similar entries in other years up to 1568); 'a pounde of candelles' (Gloucester, 1561-2); 'for nayles ... for layeing the tymber off ye stage together' (Maidstone, 1568-9); 'bordes that was borowed for to make a skaffold to the Halle' (Nottingham, 1572); 'for bearinge of bordes and other furniture' (Plymouth, 1580-1); 'for setting up stoopes for players' (Stafford, _c._ 1616).]

[Footnote 946: 'For amendynge the seelynge in the Guildhall that the Enterlude players had broken downe there this yeare' (Barnstaple, 1593-4); 'for mending the bord in the Yeld hall and the doers there, after my L. of Leycesters players who had leave to play there' (Bristol, 1577-8); 'for mending of ii forormes which were taken out of Sᵗ George Chapple and set in the Yeld hall at the play, and by the disordre of the people were broken' (Bristol, 1581); 'for mendinge the cheyre in the parlor at the Hall ... which was broken by the playars' (Leicester, 1605); 'for mendinge the glasse wyndowes att the towne hall more then was given by the playors whoe broake the same' (Leicester, 1608); &c.]

[Footnote 947: Murray, ii. 205, 229, 247, 261-3, 277-81, 284-5, 377-8, &c.]

[Footnote 948: Ibid. 202, 224, 'Given to the Queens plaiers xixˢ iiijᵈ, and was to make it up xxvjˢ viijᵈ that was gathered at the benche' (Bath, 1587); 'xvˢ beside the gatheringe' (Bath, 1588); 'xvˢ vjᵈ besides that which was given by the companie' (Bath, 1592); 'iijˢ viijᵈ on and besyde the benevolens of the people' (Canterbury, 1549); G. B. Richardson, _Extracts from the Municipal Accounts of Newcastle_, 'the Erle of Sussessx plaiers in full payment of £3 for playing a free play, commanded by Mʳ Maiore' (1594).]

[Footnote 949: Kelly, 197, 209, 247. On 22 Nov. 1566 a Corporation 'Act agaynst Waystynge of the Towne Stock' laid down that at plays there should be no 'greate alowance' out of the stock for rewards to players, but that 'euery one of the Maiores Brethren & of the xlviij beinge requyred, or havinge sommons by the comaundement of Mʳ. Maior for the tyme beinge to be there shall beare euery one of theym his & theire porcion'. This was confirmed on 4 Jan. 1570. On 16 Nov. 1582, 'It is agreed that frome henceforthe there shall not bee anye ffees or rewards gevon by the Chamber of this Towne, nor anye of the xxiiijᵗᶦ or xlviijᵗᶦ to be charged with anye payments ffor or towards anye Bearewards, Beearbaytings, Players, Playes, Enterludes or Games, or anye of theym except the Quenes Maiesties or the Lords of the Privye Counsall, nor that anye Players bee suffred to playe att the Towne Hall (except before except) & then butt onlye before the Mayor & his bretherne, vppon peyne of xlˢ to be lost by the Mayor that shall suffer or doe to the contrarye, to be levyed by his successour, vpon peyne of vˡᶦ if he make default therein'. On 30 Jan. 1607, 'It is agreed that non of either of the Twoe Companies shalbee compelled at anie tyme hereafter to paye towards anie playes, but such of them as shalbee then present at the said playes: the Kings Maiesties playors, the Queenes Maiesties playors, and the young Prince his playors excepted; and alsoe all such playors as doe belonge to anie of the Lords of his Maiesties most honorable Privie Counsell alsoe excepted; to theise they are to paye accordinge to the auncyent custome, havinge warnynge by the Mace bearer to bee att euerye such play'.]

[Footnote 950: Murray, ii. 206, 'Order by the bailiffes and 24 aldermen, as also by the comburgesses, that no playars or berwardes shalbe receved upon the Townes chardges, but if any will see the same plaies or bere baytinges, the same must be upon there owne costes and chardges'.]

[Footnote 951: When performances were prohibited at Chester in 1596 the city fixed the scale of 'gratuity' at 20_s._ for the Queen's players and 6_s._ 8_d._ for noblemen's players (Morris, 333). The Queen's men were 'much discontented' with 6_s._ at Dunwich in 1596-7 (_Hist. MSS._, _Various Collections_, vii. 82).]