Chapter XXIV: Book II: The Control of the Stage (7)

[Footnote 952: 'Forasmuch as the grauntinge of leave to stage players or players of interludes and the like, to act and represent theire interludes playes and shewes in the towne-hall is very hurtfull troublesome and inconvenyent for that the table, benches and fourmes theire sett and placed for holdinge the Kinges Courtes are by those meanes broken and spoyled, or at least wise soe disordered that the Mayor and bayliffes and other officers of the saide courts comminge thither for the administracion of justice, especially in the Pipowder Courts of the said Towne, which are there to bee holden twice a day yf occasion soe require, cannot sit there in such decent and convenient order as becometh, and dyvers other inconvenyences do thereupon ensue, It is therefore ordered by generall consent that from henceforth no leaue shall bee graunted to any Stage players or interlude players or to any other person or persons resortinge to this towne to act shewe or represent any manner of interludes or playes or any other sportes or pastymes whatsoeuer in the said hall' (Southampton, 1623); 'Forasmuch as we finde the glass windows in the Council Chamber to be much broken, and the city thereby suffereth much damage, ordered that no plaies nor players be suffered to have any use thereof' (Worcester, 1627). An earlier Worcester order had limited players to 'the lower end onlie' of the guildhall. At Chester in 1615 the exclusion of players from the hall was openly based on 'the common brute & scandall' due to 'convertinge the same beinge appointed & ordained for the judicial hearinge & determininge of criminall offences, & for the solempne meetinge & concourse of this howse into a stage for plaiers & a receptacle for idle persons'.]

[Footnote 953: 'At the New Ynn' (Abingdon, 1559); 'Certen playars, playinge uppon ropes at the Crosse Keys' (Leicester, 1590). Worcester's men played at Norwich in 1583 'in their hoste his hows', and the Queen's men in the same year at the Red Lion. A Norwich order of 1601 forbade plays at the White Horse in Tombland. A Salisbury order of 1624 laid down that all plays should in future be at the George in High Street. Where the house of a named citizen is given as the play-place, one may perhaps generally infer an inn; but in 1573 Leicester's men seem to have played at Bristol 'in the Mayors house', and at Plymouth in 1559-60 'players of London' performed 'in the vycarage'.]

[Footnote 954: 'In the churche' (Doncaster, 1574); 'in the colledge churche yarde' (Gloucester, 1589-90); 'in the churche lofte' (Marlow, 1608-9); 'in the churche' (Plymouth, 1559-60, 1565-6, 1573-4); 'in XXe churche' (Norwich, 1589-90); 'the Chappell nere the Newhall' (Norwich, 1616); 'because they should not play in the church' (Syston, 1602). On the religious opposition to this practice, cf. _Mediaeval Stage_, ii. 191.]

[Footnote 955: M. Sellers, in _E. H. R._ xii. 446, from _Corporation Minute Book_, xxxiii, f. 187.]

[Footnote 956: Murray, ii. 335.]

[Footnote 957: Cf. ch. xii (Chapel).]

[Footnote 958: So, too, the Norwich accounts record in 1590 a reward to 'the lorde Shandos players' and 'Item more in rewarde to another company of his men that cam with lycens presently after saying that thos that cam before were counterfete and not the L. Shandos men'.]

[Footnote 959: Cf. ch. ix.]

[Footnote 960: 'There shall not any playes ... be played ... on any Sabaothe dayes nor aboue twoe daies together at any tyme. And no players ... to be suffered to playe againe ... within twentie and eighte daies nexte after such tyme as they shall haue laste played.... And they shall not exceede the hower of nyne of the clocke in the nighte' (Canterbury, _Burghmote Book_, 1595); 'This day lycens ys graunted to the L. of Huntington his players to playe one daye & not vppon the Saboath daye' (Norwich, 1597); 'The Quenes players had leave guiven them to play for one weeke so that they play neither on the Saboth day nor in the night nor more then one play a day' (Norwich, 1611).]

[Footnote 961: 'Not ... after nyne of the clocke' (Norwich, 1599); cf. Canterbury, above. A Chester order of 1615 fixed 6 p.m. and a Salisbury order of 1623 7 p.m. as the limit; an Exeter order of 1609 (_H. M. C. Exeter MSS._ 321) allowed 6 p.m. between Annunciation and Michaelmas and 5 p.m. between Michaelmas and Annunciation.]

[Footnote 962: Lord Coke, as Recorder of Coventry, wrote to the Corporation on 28 March 1615 (Murray, ii. 254): 'Forasmuch as this time is by his Maiesties lawes and iniunctions consecrated to the service of Almighty God, and publique notice was given on the last Sabaoth for preparacion to the receyving of the holy communion. Theis are to will and require you to suffer no common players whatsoever to play within your Citie for that it would tend to the hinderance of devotion, and drawing of the artificers and common people from their labour. And this being signified vnto any such they will rest therewith (as becometh them) satisfied, otherwise suffer you them not and this shall be your sufficient warrant.' The letter is endorsed 'The Lord Coke his lettre concerning the La: Eliza: Players'. The Earl of Cumberland would not let Lord Vaux's men play in 1609 'because it was Lent & therefor not fitting' (Murray, ii. 255).]

[Footnote 963: Murray, ii. 234 (Chester, 1595). The Privy Council warrant for the provincial tour of Strange's men in 1593 expressly excludes plays in service time.]

[Footnote 964: 'The tyme was busy, they dyd not play' (Bristol, 1541); 'for that they should not playe here by reason that the sicknes was then in this Cytye' (Canterbury, 1608); 'for that the tyme was not conveynyent' (Leicester, 1584); 'to avoyd the meetynge of people this whote whether for fear of any infeccon as also for that they came fro an infected place' (Norwich, 1583). On 6 May 1597 the Privy Council wrote to the Suffolk justices to prohibit stage plays during the Whitsun holidays at Hadleigh (App. D, No. cviii), 'doubting what inconveniences may follow thereon, especially at this tyme of scarcety, when disordred people of the comon sort wilbe apt to misdemeane themselves'. There had been tumults in Norfolk during April, owing to the scarcity of grain (Dasent, xxvii. 88). The Privy Council did not, however, often interfere directly with provincial plays; another example is the letter of 23 June 1592 to the Earl of Derby (cf. App. D, No. xci), forbidding plays on Sundays and holidays in his lieutenancy.]

[Footnote 965: I think there is a clear distinction in municipal accounts between a 'reward' for playing and a 'gratuity' for not playing; cf. the Norwich orders in Murray, ii. 339, 341, 'beinge demaunded wherefore their comeing was, sayd they came not to ask leaue to play but to aske the gratuetie of the Cytty' (1614), 'he was desired to desist from playing & offered a benevolence in money which he refused to accept' (1616), 'this house offered him a gratuitie to desist' (1616).]

[Footnote 966: A. Clark, _Shirburn Ballads_, 48. He complained that 'Before tyme noble-mens menn hadd such entertaynement when they came to the towne that the towne hadd the favour of noble-men, but now noble-mens menn hadd such entertaynement that the towne was brought into contempt with noble-menn'. The players were probably Essex's men, as their performance on Sunday was contrary to his 'lettre'. He was, however, also High Steward of Maldon.]

[Footnote 967: Cf. p. 336.]

[Footnote 968: T. Gent, _Hist. of Hull_, 128.]

[Footnote 969: Murray, ii. 337, 'This day John Mufford one of the Lᵈ Beauchamps players being forbidden by Mʳ Maiour to playe within the liberties of this Citie and in respect thereof gave them among them xxˢ and yett notwithstanding they did sett up bills to provoke men to come to their playe and did playe in XXe churche. Therefore the seid John Mufford is comytted to prison' (1590); cf. ch. xiii (Worcester's, 1583; Essex's, 1585; Derby's, 1602). So, too, at Coventry in 1600 'the lo: Shandoes [Chandos's] players were comitted to prison for their contempt agaynst Mʳ Maior & ther remayned untill they made their submisshon under their hands as appeareth in the fyle of Record and their hands to be seene'. At Nottingham in 1603 a penalty on the host is recorded in the entry 'Richard Jackson commytted for sufferinge players to sound thyere trumpetts and playinge in his howse without lycence, and for suffering his guests to be out all night'.]

[Footnote 970: Halliwell-Phillipps, i. 326, reprints from this tract (S. R. 31 May 1605) the chapter 'a pretty Prancke passed by Ratsey upon certain Players that he met by chance in an Inne, who denied their Lord and Maister, and used another Noblemans name'. Gamaliel Ratsey, highwayman, harangued the players, like Hamlet, on 'striving to over-doe, and go beyond yourselves ... yet your poets take great paines to make your parts fit for your mouthes, though you gape never so wide', and on the ups and downs of the profession, for some 'goe home at night with fifteene pence share apeece', while others become wealthy. Later he met them again passing 'like camelions' under the name of another lord. They gave a 'private play' before Ratsey, who rewarded them with 40_s._, 'with which they held themselves very richly satisfied, for they scarce had twentie shillings audience at any time for a play in the countrey'. Next day he met them with their wagon in the highway, robbed them, bade them pawn their apparel, 'for as good actors and stalkers as you are have done it, though now they scorne it', gave them leave to play under his protection and share with him, and advised their leader to get to London.]

[Footnote 971: Payments to travelling companies appear in the household accounts of the Earl of Rutland at Belvoir (_Rutland MSS._ iv. 260), the Earl of Cumberland at Skipton Castle (Murray, ii. 255), the Duchess of Suffolk at Grimsthorpe (_Ancaster MSS._ 459), Sir George Vernon at Haddon Hall (G. Le B. Smith, _Haddon_, 121), Lord North at Kirtling (Murray, ii. 295), the Earl of Derby at Lathom House, New Park, and Knowsley Hall (Murray, ii. 296), the Shuttleworths at Smithills and Gawthorpe Hall (Murray, ii. 393), and Francis Willoughby at Wollaton (_Middleton MSS._ 421). In _A Mad World, my Masters_, v. 1, 2, characters shamming to be Lord Owemuch's players come to Sir Bounteous Progress's, and perform _The Slip_, until they are interrupted by a constable.]

[Footnote 972: Murray, ii. 19-98, records, in addition to the above, the names of from fifty to sixty patrons between 1559 and 1616, under whose names companies are not traceable in London.]

[Footnote 973: Cf. ch. xxii.]

[Footnote 974: Cf. ch. xiii (King's, Anne's).]

[Footnote 975: Grosart, _Lismore Papers_, 1. xix; W. J. Lawrence, _Was Shakespeare ever in Ireland?_ (_Sh.-Jahrbuch_, xlii. 65). The earliest notice is of Prince Charles's men in Feb. 1616.]

[Footnote 976: Cf. ch. xiv.]

[Footnote 977: C. Hughes, _Shakespeare's Europe_, 304, 373. Moryson again refers to the vogue abroad of 'stragling broken companyes' from England in his account of the London theatre; cf. ch. xvi, introduction.]

[Footnote 978: E. Cellius, _Eques Auratus Anglo-Wirtembergicus_ (1605), 229 'Profert enim multos et praestantes Anglia musicos, comoedos, tragoedos, histrionicae peritissimos, e quibus interdum aliquot consociati sedibus suis ad tempus relictis ad exteras nationes excurrere, artemque suam illis praesertim Principum aulis demonstrare ostentareque consueverunt. Paucis ab hinc annis in Germaniam nostram Anglicani musici dictum ob finem expaciati, et in magnorum Principum aulis aliquandiu versati, tantum ex arte musica, histrionicaque sibi favorem conciliarunt, ut largiter remunerati domum inde auro et argento onusti sunt reversi'; Johannes Rhenanus, in dedication of _Streit der Sinne_ (a translation of the English play of _Lingua_) to Maurice of Hesse-Cassel, '... die Engländischen Comoedianten (ich rede von geübten) anderen vorgehn und den Vorzug haben'; Daniel von Wensin, _Oratio contra Britanniam_, in Fr. Achillis Ducis Würtemberg, _Consultatio de principatu inter provincias Europae habita Tubingae in illustri collegio_ (1613), 'Nec diu est cum plerique artifices in Anglia peregrini et exteri et aurifabri Londini pene omnes fuerunt Germani: Anglis interea gulae voluptatibus ... et rebus nihili, atque adeo histrioniae iugiter operam dantibus; in qua sic profecerunt, ut iam apud nos Angli histriones omnium maxime delectent'.]

[Footnote 979: Another example is Ioannes Valentinus Andreae, who writes in his _Vita_ (ed. 1849), 10 'Iam a secundo et tertio post millesimum sexcentesimum coeperam aliquid exercendi ingenii ergo pangere, cuius facile prima fuere Esther et Hyacinthus comoediae ad aemulationem Anglicorum histrionum iuvenili ausu factae'.]

[Footnote 980: M. Röchell, _Chronik_, in _Die Geschichtsquellen des Bisthums Münster_, iii. 174.]

[Footnote 981: E. Mentzel, _Geschichte der Schauspielkunst in Frankfurt_, 52.]

[Footnote 982: Cohn, lxxxviii.]

[Footnote 983: A. Glaser, _Geschichte des Theaters in Braunschweig_, 13.]

[Footnote 984: _Archiv für Litteratur-Geschichte_, xv. 212, from diary of Martin Crusius at Tübingen in 1597: 'Es sind wol x Comoedianten hie gewesen: qui 5 aut 6 dies comoedias egerunt in domo frumentaria. Dicuntur Angli esse et miri artifices. Sunt illi quibus Dux noster 300 fl. donasse dicitur. Ego non spectaui. Quid ad hominem ista septuagenario maiorem? fuerunt illa dramata amatoria. Hodie Susannam egerunt. Ego sum scriptoribus Homericis occupatus.']

[Footnote 985: Cohn, lxxx.]

[Footnote 986: C. F. Meyer in _Sh.-Jahrbuch_, xxxviii. 200.]

[Footnote 987: C. Harris in _M. L. A._ xxii. 446.]

[Footnote 988: Cohn, xcvi.]

XI

THE ACTOR'S ECONOMICS

[_Bibliographical Note._--The material for this chapter is
mainly to be found in Book III (Companies) and Book IV
(Theatres) and the works there cited. My account of Henslowe is
practically all based on W. W. Greg, _Henslowe's Diary_
(1904-8) and _Henslowe Papers_ (1907). W. Rendle made a useful
contribution in _Philip Henslowe_ (_Genealogist_, n. s. iv).
Since I completed this chapter, useful studies in theatrical
finance have been contributed by A. Thaler, _Shakespeare's
Income_ (1918, _S. P._ xv. 82), _Playwright's Benefits and
Interior Gathering in the Elizabethan Theatre_ (1919, _S. P._
xvi. 187), _The Elizabethan Dramatic Companies_ (1920, _M. L.
R._ xxxv. 123).]

Withal the actors, or the more discreet of them, prospered. This fact peeps out from the diatribes of their critics, and is indeed part of the case against them. The theatres are thronged, while the churches are empty. The drones suck the honey stored up by London's laborious citizens. Already, in 1578, John Stockwood estimates the aggregate gain of eight play-houses, open but once in the week, at £2,000 by the year. The players began to ruffle it, in garments fit only for their betters. 'The very hyrelings', says Gosson in 1579, 'which stand at reuersion of viˢ by the weeke, iet under gentlemen's noses in sutes of silke, exercising themselues too prating on the stage, and common scoffing when they come abrode, where they looke askance ouer the shoulder at euery man, of whom the Sunday before they begged an almes'; and in like vein Walsingham's correspondent of 1587 bewails to him the 'wofull sight to see two hundred proude players jett in their silkes, wheare five hundred pore people sterve in the streets'. It is, however, possible to lay undue stress upon the public finery as an evidence of prosperity, for this was apt to be borrowed from the tiring-house wardrobe, and in time it was found that the advertisement earned hardly justified the detriment to the common stock of apparel. The articles signed by those joining the Lady Elizabeth's men about 1614 bound them amongst other things not to go out of the theatre with any of the apparel on their bodies. The surest economic sign of a growing industry is the capacity to spend money on building, and it was a true instinct that led Stockwood to discommend the gorgeous playing-places erected at 'great charges' in the fields, and William Harrison to note it as 'an evident token of a wicked time when plaiers wexe so riche that they can build suche houses'. And when Robert Greene wanted to paint a picture of a typical successful actor in 1592, he made him describe himself as one who had once travelled on foot and carried his properties on his back, but now his very share in playing apparel would not be sold for £200, and he was reputed by his neighbours able 'at his proper cost to build a windmill'.[989] James Burbadge was 'the first builder of playhowses', and thereby laid the foundations of the prosperity of his family. He had been a joiner, before he became a player, and perhaps this suggested the enterprise of the Theatre, which he put up in 1576 upon borrowed capital. When his son Richard died in 1619 he was reckoned worth £300 a year in land. Even more fortunate was Edward Alleyn, who was in a position to retire from the stage before he was forty, to purchase the manor of Dulwich for £10,000, to build the College of God's Gift, and thereafter to spend upon the maintenance of his household and his foundation at the rate of some £1,700 a year. Other actors, mainly of the King's company, can be shown to have made their more modest piles. Thomas Pope, Augustine Phillips, Henry Condell, all appear from their wills to have been substantial men when they died. John Heminge is described in 1614 as 'of greate lyveinge wealth and power'. The Restoration story that Shakespeare spent £1,000 a year at Stratford is probably apocryphal, in view of the fact that his known investments only amount to a little over £1,000; but at least he returned as a moneyed man to the scene of his father's bankruptcy, and enjoyed consideration as the owner of the best house in his native town. Aubrey's statement that he left property worth about £200 or £300 a year, which gives him a fortune about equal to Richard Burbadge's, seems not unreasonable.[990] Like true Englishmen, the successful players sought after less material proof of their worth than was afforded by their lands and houses. Alleyn, having long been lord of a manor, and having connected himself by marriage with the Dean of St. Paul's, was desirous in 1624 of 'sum further dignetie', probably a knighthood. Others were content with acquiring or assuming a claim to armorial bearings, which would entitle them to rank as 'gentlemen'. Shakespeare in 1596 obtained a confirmation of a grant of arms made to his father as bailiff of Stratford nearly thirty years before; and in 1599 sought additional authority to impale the coat of his mother's family, the Ardens.[991] Heminges obtained a confirmation of arms in 1629. Such grants did not go altogether unstrictured by heraldic purists, and the cases of Shakespeare and of his fellow Richard Cowley formed part of the material for a charge of making grants to 'base and ignoble persons' brought by a rival against the responsible king-of-arms. Augustine Phillips and Thomas Pope did not trouble the heralds, but went to an heraldic painter, and bought, the one the arms of Sir William Phillips, Lord Bardolph, and the other those of Sir Thomas Pope, Chancellor of the Augmentations.[992] These ambitions of the players, no less than their investments, yielded stuff both for moralizing and for satire. Henry Crosse, in his _Vertues Common-wealth_ (1603), rebukes the pride of the 'copper-lace gentlemen' who 'purchase lands by adulterous playes'.[993] And in the tract of _Ratseis Ghost_ (1605), already cited, Gamaliel Ratsey speaks of those 'whom Fortune hath so well favored that, what by penny-sparing and long practise of playing, are growne so wealthy that they have expected to be knighted, or at least to be conjunct in authority and to sit with men of great worship on the bench of justice'; and he advises the country player, with whom he has fallen in, to get him to London, 'and when thou feelest thy purse well lined, buy thee some place or lordship in the country, that, growing weary of playing, thy mony may there bring thee to dignitie and reputation'. The player too heard 'of some that have gone to London very meanly, and have come in time to be exceeding wealthy'. Ratsey then knights him 'Sir Simon Two Shares and a Halfe', and tells him he is 'the first knight that ever was player in England'.[994]

Certainly all players did not grow rich, even in London. Some of them to the end, perhaps the majority, remained threadbare companions enough; in and out of debt, spongers upon their fellows, frequenters of pawnshops, acquainted with prison. Partly it was a matter of character. Those who had to do with the stage were not all such riff-raff as a hasty reading of the Puritan literature might suggest. Gosson, indeed, admits as much, allowing that some among those professing 'the qualitie' are 'sober, discreete, properly learned honest housholders and citizens well thought on amonge their neighbours at home'; while on his side Thomas Heywood is quick to maintain the harm wrought by the licentious to a calling in which many are 'of substance, of government, of sober lives and temperate carriages, house-keepers and contributory to all duties enjoyned them', and to plead that if there be a few of degenerate demeanour, his readers will not 'censure hardly of all for the misdeeds of some'.[995] Doubtless there is a certain instability of temperament, which the life of the theatre, with its ups and downs of fortune, its unreal sentiments and its artificially stimulated emotions, is well calculated to encourage; and we may perhaps find the victims of such a temperament in certain actors who, although clearly of standing in their profession, seem to have been constantly shifting from company to company, without attaining any secure position or, as one may conjecture, reaping any substantial harvest from their labour and their skill. One of these was Richard Jones, originally a fellow of Alleyn with Lord Worcester's men, presently selling to Alleyn his share of clothes and books, at one time reduced to 1_s._ a day or nothing, at another setting out to tour the Continent with Robert Browne, then back again with Alleyn amongst the Admiral's men, then transferring himself to the Swan and returning a few months later to the Rose, and finally allowing himself to be bought out for £50 and passing into obscurity. Another was Martin Slater, also at one time one of the Admiral's men, whom he left and went to law with, then a wanderer with Laurence Fletcher in Scotland, and afterwards successively traceable with Lord Hertford's men, with Queen Anne's, as a member of the King's Revels syndicate, and with Queen Anne's again as manager of one of the provincial companies travelling under the Queen's warrant. Perhaps it is merely another way of stating the same issue to say that the financial success of a player depended on his obtaining an interest, not merely in the day-to-day profits of a company, but also in the permanent investment represented by a theatre. This becomes readily apparent upon an analysis of the business methods employed in the organization of the dramatic industry. The basis of this organization was the banding together of players into associations or partnerships, the members of which acted together, held a common stock of garments and play-books, incurred joint expenditure, and daily or at other convenient periods divided up the profits of their enterprise. In a legal document an associate of such a company is described as 'a full adventurer, storer and sharer among them';[996] the term in ordinary use was 'sharer'. No doubt the sharing arrangement was in origin traditional; it is described in 1614 as 'accordinge to the custome of players'.[997] But it became convenient to formulate it in a legal agreement or 'composition', which provided for the co-operation of the sharers and defined their relations to each other. Thus the composition of the Duke of York's men in 1610 bound them to play together for three years, and deprived a member who left without the consent of his fellows of any interest in the common stock. Under that of Queen Anne's men about 1612 a retiring sharer was entitled to a payment at the rate of £80 for a full share. Such provisions, which were intended to obviate the breaking up of a stock, and of themselves indicate a substantial investment of capital, seem to have been usual. Alleyn had £50 on leaving the Admiral's men in 1597, Jones and Shaw £50 in 1602; under the composition of the same company, then the Prince's men, in 1613, a sharer retiring with consent was entitled to £70. Both the Queen's and the Prince's men made a similar allowance to the widow of a sharer. Each of the sharers signed a bond for the observance of the composition, which also covered certain disciplinary regulations imposed by the company on its members. Thus the articles signed by Robert Dawes, on joining the Lady Elizabeth's men in 1614, not only made him a partaker in the contractual and financial liabilities of the company, but also exposed him to penalties if he missed plays or rehearsals, or came late or in a state of intoxication, or took apparel or other common property away from the theatre. As the compositions grew more detailed and the enterprises more important, it proved convenient that one of the sharers should be appointed, formally or informally, to act as trustee and manager for the rest, to receive and make payments, to hold the composition, bonds, licences, and other legal papers, and generally to look after the business interests of his fellows. Thus it is pleaded in a lawsuit concerning Queen Anne's men that Thomas Greene was 'one of the principall and cheif persons of the said companie', and did 'laie out or disburse' moneys on their behalf; and that, after his death in 1612, the company 'did put the managing of thier whole businesses and affaires belonging vnto them ioyntly as they were players in trust' unto Christopher Beeston, by whom they were 'altogether ruled'. John Heminge seems to have acted in a similar capacity for the King's men, and to have had the custody of their deeds. He regularly appears as their payee at Court, and it is probable that he gave up acting in order to devote himself to business management. The members of a company did not invariably share and share alike. It is possible that in some cases the manager or a leading actor had a preponderant interest.[998] Tucca, in _The Poetaster_, at the end of his interview with Histrio, bids him commend him to 'Seven Shares and a Half'. So, too, Gamaliel Ratsey knights his player as 'Sir Simon Two Shares and a Halfe'. Perhaps this is only the chaff of the satirists. In any case one hopes that there is no foundation for the further suggestion of Tucca, when he offers to take the players into his service, and 'ha' two shares for my countenance'.[999] We know what Ratsey's corresponding threat to 'share with thee againe for playing under my warrant' means, for Ratsey was a highwayman, and levied his share not by 'composition', but at the end of a pistol. An actual example of a privileged share is that held by Alleyn in the Admiral's company about 1600, which seems to have been free of any liability to contribute towards the upkeep of the stock or other current expenses.[1000] The shares were often subdivided, so that some members of the company were full sharers, others half sharers or three-quarter sharers.[1001] The number of shares varied; an ordinary London company may be taken to have consisted of about ten or twelve sharers.[1002] For travelling purposes it is probable that separate compositions were entered into, except perhaps for short summer tours, and that the numbers were smaller.[1003] It should be made clear that the companies of players, although based upon the bodies of royal or noble servants constituted under patents or other warrants of appointment, were not precisely identical with these. Each company had to get the authority of such a warrant, before it was licensed to act at all, but the legal bond of association between its members was not the warrant, but the composition. As a rule the terms of the patents give or imply a power to those named in them to associate themselves with others. New members could doubtless be sworn into the service of the lord without any need for a fresh patent. But it cannot be held that every fellow sharer was necessarily a servant of the same lord, and still less that every servant named in a warrant was necessarily a sharer of any particular company acting under that warrant. Thus there is no proof that Laurence Fletcher, who is named first amongst the King's servants of 1603, ever acted with the King's men. Similarly Martin Slater and certain other Queen's servants and Gilbert Reason, a Prince's servant, did not, during long periods, act with the corresponding London companies, but toured the provinces with companies of their own, taking out for this purpose duplicates or exemplifications of the patents, a practice which came to be regarded by the authorities as an abuse.[1004] On the other hand, the servants of two lords sometimes played as a single company.[1005] Thus Lord Oxford's men and Lord Worcester's were 'ioyned by agrement togeather in on companie' at the Boar's Head during 1602. Similarly Lord Hunsdon's men and Lord Howard's came as a single company to Court in 1586; the Queen's men and Lord Sussex's were 'togeather' at the Rose in 1594, while Rosseter's patent for the Porter's Hall theatre in 1615 contemplates its use by no less than three companies, the Lady Elizabeth's, the Prince's, and the Queen's Revels, probably as a united body. Or the servant of one lord might attach himself as an individual to the company passing under the name of another. Thus Alleyn was still an Admiral's man when he toured with Lord Strange's men in 1593, possibly as the last representative of a more complete combination between two companies. Similarly Robert Pallant remained a Queen's man while playing successively with the Lady Elizabeth's and the Duke of York's in 1614-16, and William Rowley appeared in the Prince's livery at King James's funeral in 1625, although he had probably joined the King's men some two years before.[1006]

The sharers did not, however, take the whole risk of a theatrical enterprise; the owner or owners of the play-house stood in with them. This arrangement certainly goes back to the days of the elder Burbadge, 'the first builder of play-houses'. I do not know whether it had also prevailed in the London inn-yards. Instead of paying a fixed rent for the building placed at their disposal, the sharers assigned to the owner a fixed part of the takings at each performance. Originally Burbadge had the whole of the payments made at the entrances to the galleries; his successors contented themselves with half these payments, together with, at the Globe, half those made at the tiring-house door. The other half, and the full payments at all other outer doors went to the sharers. The owner was apparently allowed to safeguard his interests by appointing the 'gatherers' or money-takers for the galleries.[1007] When the Globe was opened in 1599 the Burbadges of the second generation hit upon the device of binding the interests of some of the leading actors more closely to their own by giving them a share in these profits of the 'house'. To this end the site was conveyed by lease in two distinct moieties. One the Burbadges held; the other was divided amongst five of the actors. Subsequently it was several times redivided into a varying number of fractions, according as one man dropped out, or it was desired to admit another to participate in the benefits. The tenures of the fractions, while such as to secure joint control, did not prevent the alienation of the profits attached to them. This gave rise to some trouble, owing to the remarriage of widows with persons who were not members of the company at all. Incidentally it enabled John Heminge and Henry Condell, who had business capacity, to buy up by degrees the whole moiety. There was a rent payable to the ground landlord, and to this each holder of a fraction made a proportionate contribution. A levy was also called when the Globe had to be rebuilt after a fire in 1613. The Burbadges claimed to have been at the cost of the original building and to have raised a loan for the purpose. We know that they pulled down the Theatre and carried the materials across the water. The lease of the Globe formed a precedent for a somewhat similar transaction when the King's men took over responsibility for the Blackfriars in 1608. In this case the freehold belonged to Richard Burbadge, who leased out the play-house in sevenths, keeping one fraction himself, and allotting the rest to his brother, to the representative of a former tenant, and to four of the players. At some later date the interest was divided into eighths instead of sevenths. It is to be noted that it was only certain selected men who thus acquired rights in the profits of the houses, and one of the effects of the policy adopted was to set up a distinction amongst the members of the association itself, of whom some were both 'housekeepers', as they came to be called, and ordinary sharers, while others were ordinary sharers alone. At the Blackfriars from the beginning, and at the Globe as rights under the leases were alienated, there were also housekeepers who were not sharers at all, and might even be members of rival companies. A dispute arising from these anomalies throws light upon the responsibilities undertaken and the advantages enjoyed by housekeepers and sharers respectively. It is of late date, but there is no reason to think that the conditions revealed were substantially different from those of earlier years. About 1630 all the rights in both houses were held, mainly through deaths and alienations, by persons who were not actors. Shortly afterwards two or three of the leading members of the company were allowed to acquire interests, and in 1635 three other sharers brought the state of things before the notice of the Lord Chamberlain, who exercised some equitable control over the affairs of the company as a part of the royal Household, and petitioned that they too might be admitted to the same privilege of purchasing fractions of the leases 'at the usuall and accustomed rates'. The pleadings and the orders of the Lord Chamberlain form the record known as the _Sharers Papers_.[1008] From them it emerges that the housekeepers were entitled to receive a full moiety, 'without any defalcation or abatement at all' of all takings from the galleries and boxes in both houses and from the tiring-house door of the Globe. The sharers had the other moiety, together with the takings at the outer doors. If a man was a sharer as well as a housekeeper, he claimed under both heads. The outgoings were also apportioned, and in the view of the sharers, most unfairly. The housekeepers only had to pay the rent and the cost of repairs. The sharers had to find hired men and boys, and to meet all charges for apparel, poets, music, lights, and so forth. The Lord Chamberlain was apparently impressed by the justice of the representation, and made an order for a transfer of interests in both houses.

The method of organization adopted by the Burbadges was subject to abuses, both from alienation and from the agglutinative tendencies of Heminge and Condell. But, at any rate during the earlier years of its working, it seems to have served its purpose of attaching the individual King's men, by means of a capital investment, to the welfare and stability of their company. It was adopted by their principal rivals, by the Queen's men at the Red Bull from the beginning of the reign, by Alleyn and the Prince's men at the Fortune from a somewhat later date. Certainly these companies rested upon a firmer foundation than those which had to look for their theatre to an outside capitalist, especially when that outside capitalist was Philip Henslowe. I have more than once had occasion to mention Henslowe, whose personality stands out, more clearly perhaps than any other, from the stage history of our whole period. It is to the labours of my friend Dr. Greg that we owe an adequate presentment of that personality. He appears to have been a younger son of a good family, originally of Devonshire, but settled in Sussex, where his father was Master of the Game in Ashdown Forest and Brill Park. He had evidently had little formal education, and was a poor man when, probably at some date in the 'seventies, he married Agnes Woodward, a wealthy widow, to whose former husband he had been 'servant'. Agnes had a daughter Joan, who in 1592 married Edward Alleyn, between whom and Henslowe, ever after if not before this event, the closest business and personal relations existed. The occupation which Henslowe thus, in the traditional manner of apprentices, acquired may have been that of a dyer; he is described in documents of about 1584-7 as 'citizen and dyer of London'. But he had a shrewd business capacity, which he turned to many other ways of making money. He was at one time engaged in the manufacture of starch. From at least 1587 onwards he was interested in theatrical property. Between 1593 and 1596 he was carrying on, through agents, a pawnbroking establishment. By 1592 at latest he had obtained an appointment as Groom of the Chamber at Court.[1009] In 1603 he was promoted to be Gentleman Sewer of the Chamber to King James. About 1594 he began to finance the Southwark bear-baiting, under a licence from the Master of the Royal Game of Paris Garden, and by arrangement with Alleyn who held the Bear Garden, and Jacob Meade who was Keeper of the Bears. After more than one unsuccessful attempt, Henslowe and Alleyn secured a transfer to themselves of the joint Mastership of Paris Garden in 1604. Meanwhile Henslowe was steadily amassing house property, most of it in Southwark, and some of it, at least by origin, of a rather questionable character.[1010] His own residence is given in 1577 as in the Liberty of the Clink, more precisely in 1593 as 'on the bank sid right over against the clink', whereby is doubtless meant the prison which gave its name to the Liberty; and in the Clink he continued to dwell to the end. For subsidies he was regularly assessed at £10. He filled parochial offices, becoming vestryman of St. Saviour's, Southwark, in 1607, churchwarden in 1608, and governor of the free grammar school in 1612. His death on 6 January 1616 was followed almost immediately by that of his widow in April 1617, and most of his property passed into the hands of the Alleyns, together with a mass of papers, which are now amalgamated with Alleyn's own at Dulwich. The collection is of the first importance both for dramatic and for social history. It contains title-deeds of theatres, agreements, and bonds entered into by companies of players, private correspondence between the members of Henslowe's family and with the poets and actors dependent upon him, inventories of stage costumes, book-holder's 'plots' or outlines of plays, and many other documents touching in innumerable ways upon the finance and control of the stage. It also contains Henslowe's famous 'Diary'. This is not in fact a diary at all, but a folio memorandum book, which Henslowe used principally during 1592-1603, and in which he entered in picturesque confusion particulars of accounts between himself and the companies occupying his theatres, together with jottings on many personal and business matters, and records of loans, which are often written, signed, or witnessed in the autographs of players and poets.

From the diary and the related documents it is possible to reconstruct in its main outlines the history of Henslowe's theatrical enterprises, and to contrast his policy as a capitalist with that of his rivals, the Burbadges. During the earlier years covered by our information, the theatre with which he was mainly concerned was the Rose, which he had himself built on the Bankside, although he appears also to have had an interest in the distant and practically disused house at Newington Butts. At one or other of these he entertained a succession of companies for the short periods during which playing was possible in the plague-stricken period of 1592-4. In the autumn of 1594 he settled down with Alleyn and the Admiral's men at the Rose, and this combination lasted, with some reorganization of the company in 1597, until 1600, when the Admiral's men moved to the newly built Fortune, and were succeeded a couple of years later at the Rose by Lord Worcester's men. It seems clear from an analysis of the accounts which he kept during 1592-7, that Henslowe, like the housekeepers at the Globe, was in the practice of taking his profits as landlord in the form, not of a fixed rent, but of a share of the daily takings at the theatre, and in his case also the sum allotted seems to have been half the proceeds of the galleries as distinct from the outer doors of the play-house. He was responsible for keeping the building in repair, and for the fees to the Master of the Revels for licensing its use; all other outgoings had presumably to be met by the company. If, as sometimes happened, the theatre was put at the disposal of some fencer or other performer not belonging to the company, the profits of the subletting were apportioned between Henslowe and the actors.[1011] It should be added that, under an agreement entered into when the building of the Rose was being planned in 1587, Henslowe had assigned half his profits for a term of eight years and a quarter to one John Cholmley in return for fixed quarterly payments. The covenants of the agreement entitled the parties jointly to appoint actors to perform in the play-house, and gatherers to collect the entrance fees, and reserved to each of them the right 'to suffer theire frendes to go in for nothinge'. They were to share the cost of repairs and Cholmley, who was a grocer, was to have the monopoly of selling drink on the premises. The agreement was probably terminated by Cholmley's death; if not, it would have served Henslowe for an insurance over the lean years of the long plague.[1012]

The character of Henslowe's entries in the diary changes towards the end of 1597, but the indications do not suggest any alteration in the conditions upon which the Admiral's men remained his tenants. On the other hand, the new series of accounts reveals certain relations between himself and the company for which there is no known analogy in the organization of the King's men. Quite apart from payments for the use of the theatres, the players had to meet divers costs of maintenance, including the purchase of play-books from dramatists and the provision of properties and garments for new productions. These charges were heavy and fluctuating, and proved a difficulty for men who lived from hand to mouth, and had acquired the thriftless habit of sharing their takings weekly or even daily, and keeping no reserve fund. Henslowe, as a capitalist, came to the rescue. Perhaps tentatively at first, but certainly from 1597 as a regular system, he met the claims of poets and tradesmen as they fell due, and debited the sums advanced to a running account with the company, which forms the main subject-matter of the diary. Of course he had to recoup himself from time to time; and Dr. Greg has made it pretty clear that, when the system was in full working, he did this by claiming a lien upon the residue of the gallery takings which, although collected by his own 'gatherers', would otherwise, under the tenancy agreement, have been handed over to the sharers. For a time he seems to have satisfied himself with reserving half of this residue towards his account. In July 1598, however, he notes in the diary 'Here I begyne to receue the wholle gallereys'. Even so the repayments did not keep pace with the expenditure, and from time to time he struck a balance and took an acknowledgement from the company of the amount of their outstanding debt. Most of Henslowe's advances were either for properties and apparel or for the writing of plays, and I see no reason to doubt that substantially the whole expenditure of the company under these two heads passed through his hands. Sometimes, but not always, he paid the fee demanded by the Master of the Revels for the licensing of a new play; and occasionally he put his hand in his pocket for travelling or legal expenses, or for the shot of a corporate jollification at a tavern. On the other hand, there were certain regular outgoings with which he had nothing to do, and for which the company must have had to make provision in other ways; for lighting and cleaning and the rushes which obviated the need for cleaning, for music, for the wages of stage attendants and those actors who were not sharers, the 'hirelings', as they were called from an early date.[1013] Probably the boys who took the female parts were apprenticed to individual sharers; in one case a boy was apprenticed to Henslowe, who charged the company or one of its members a weekly sum for his services.[1014] It is, however, interesting to observe that in the case of the Admiral's men, the legal instruments which secured the continuity of the services of individual actors sometimes at least took the form, for sharers no less than for hirelings, not of bonds given to their fellows, but of contracts of service entered into, under penalties for breach, with Henslowe himself. As it was open to Henslowe to terminate these contracts, the constitution of the company was to a certain extent dependent upon his good will, and in fact he more than once refers to them as 'my company'.[1015] He was not, however, in any strict sense the 'director' or even the 'manager' of the company. Dr. Greg more aptly describes him as their 'banker'.[1016] The entries of his advances on their behalf are so worded as to imply that they were made on specific authorities given by one or more leading members of the company; and some of these authorities in fact exist in the shape of letters asking Henslowe to make payments to poets in respect of plays which the company have heard and approved. That in practice the banker had a considerable say in influencing the policy of the company is probable enough; and also that to the poor devils of poets he, rather than the actors, must have often appeared in the welcome guise of paymaster. Both poets and actors were under frequent personal obligations to him for small loans;[1017] and he sometimes found the capital sum necessary to enable an actor to become a sharer, and took it back by instalments.[1018]