Chapter XXVI: Book II: The Control of the Stage (9)

_Servant._ What? Not a player?

_Bellamont._ No; though a sharer bawl.
I'll speak with none, although it be the mouth
Of the big company.'

Cf. Dekker, _News from Hell_ (1606, _Works_, ii. 99), 'Marrie players swarme there as they do here, whose occupation being smelt out, by the Caco-daemon, or head officer of the Countrie, to bee lucrative, he purposes to make vp a company, and to be chiefe sharer himselfe'; also _A Mad World, my Masters_, V. i. 42, where one of the sham Lord Owemuch's players is a 'politician', who 'works out restraints, makes best legs at court, and has a suit made of purpose for the company's business' and 'has greatest share and may live of himselfe'.]

[Footnote 999: Jonson, _Poetaster_, III. iv. 373, 'Commend me to seuen-shares and a halfe, and remember to morrow--if you lacke a seruice, you shall play in my name, rascalls, but you shall buy your owne cloth, and I'le ha' two shares for my countenance'. It appears from a list of Sir Henry Herbert's profits as Master of the Revels, drawn up in 1662, that he had secured a share, which he valued at £100 a year, from each of the London companies, other than the King's men (_Variorum_, iii. 266).]

[Footnote 1000: It is impossible to say what arrangement underlies the statement in an undated letter from Richard Jones to Alleyn about a German tour (_Henslowe Papers_, 33) that Robert Browne was 'put to half a shaer, and to stay hear, for they ar all against his goinge'.]

[Footnote 1001: _Hamlet_, III. ii. 286:

'_Hamlet._ Would not this, sir, and a forest of feathers--if
the rest of my fortunes turn Turk with me--with two Provincial
roses on my razed shoes, get me a fellowship in a cry of
players.

_Horatio._ Half a share.

_Hamlet._ A whole one, I.'

For half-sharers, cf. ch. xiii (Queen's, Admiral's). Three-quarter sharers existed in the Lady Elizabeth's men about 1614; cf. T. M., _Father Hubburd's Tales_ (Bullen, _Middleton_, viii. 64), 'The ant began to stalk like a three-quarter sharer'.]

[Footnote 1002: The number of players named in the Jacobean patents varies from 7 to 14, but this gives little direct guidance as to the number of sharers. It is, however, consistent with my estimate, which is based mainly upon the number of Admiral's men shown at various times in contractual relations with Henslowe. There were 12 sharers in the Lady Elizabeth's company in 1611 and 12 in Queen Anne's company in 1617. Probably the Elizabethan companies ran rather smaller.]

[Footnote 1003: Dekker, _News from Hell_ (1606), 'a companie of country players, being nine in number, one sharer and the rest jornymen'; cf. p. 362.]

[Footnote 1004: Cf. ch. ix.]

[Footnote 1005: Amalgamated companies also toured the provinces, and even entered into partnership with companies, such as Lord Morley's, which were purely provincial. Thus we find Hunsdon's and Morley's at Bristol in 1583, and Hunsdon's and Howard's at Leicester in 1585; the Queen's and Sussex's at Southampton, Gloucester, and Coventry in 1590-1; the Queen's and Morley's at Aldeburgh on 11 Oct. 1592 (Stopes, _Hunnis_, 314); the Admiral's, Strange's (or Derby's), and Morley's variously combined at Ipswich, Southampton, Bath, Shrewsbury, York, and Newcastle in 1592-4. Sometimes players worked with musicians, tumblers or rope-dancers; of course this was so in London itself, but naturally the old methods of the mimes tended to reassert themselves more markedly in the provinces.]

[Footnote 1006: Murray, i. 172 (table), 237.]

[Footnote 1007: Henslowe's agreement with John Cholmley, probably for the Rose, in 1587, provides for joint appointment by the parties as landlords. The same arrangement is implied, so far as the galleries are concerned, by the Lady Elizabeth's agreement of 1614. In 1612 Robert Browne wrote to Alleyn to procure 'a gathering place' for the wife of one Rose, a hireling of Prince Henry's men. Apparently the sharers had to pay the gatherers' wages. An undated letter from William Bird, also of Prince Henry's men, to Alleyn tells him of the dishonesty of John Russell, 'that by yowr apoyntment was made a gatherer with us'. The company will not let him 'take the box', but will pay his wages as 'a nessessary atendaunt on the stage', and if he likes, employ him also as a tailor. Henslowe made the Lady Elizabeth's pay for nine gatherers more than he was entitled to. In _Frederick and Basilea_, the gatherers came on as supers (_Henslowe Papers_, 3, 24, 63, 85, 89, 137). The 'place or priviledge' in the Globe and Blackfriars left by Henry Condell to Elizabeth Wheaton in 1627 was presumably that of a gatherer. A satirist wrote in _The Actors Remonstrance_ of 1643 (Hazlitt, _E. D. S._ 263), 'Our very doore-keepers men and women most grievously complaine that by this cessation they are robbed of the privilege of stealing from us with licence: they cannot now, as in King Agamemnon's dayes, seeme to scratch their heads where they itch not, and drop shillings and half croune-pieces in at their collars'. The money taken at the door or in the gallery was traditionally put in a box and kept for division; cf. Rankins, _Mirrour of Monsters_ (1587), f. 6, 'door-keepers and box-holders at plays'.]

[Footnote 1008: Cf. ch. xvi (Globe) and ch. xvii (Blackfriars); the document is printed in Halliwell-Phillipps, i. 312.]

[Footnote 1009: This is the only point on which I have anything to add to Dr. Greg's personal information as to Henslowe; it is important as bearing on the history of Lord Strange's men (q.v.). He is described as Groom of the Chamber in an undated document (_Henslowe Papers_, 42) belonging to a series dealing with the opening of the Rose for Strange's men in a long vacation. This cannot be put later than 1592, as there was plague throughout the long vacation of 1593 and Lord Strange became Earl of Derby in Sept. 1593. On the other hand, Dr. Greg (Henslowe, ii. 9; _Henslowe Papers_, 36), following Warner, 8, argues that Henslowe must have become Groom of the Chamber later than 7 April 1592, since he is not named in a list of Grooms appended to a warrant of that date and is named in a similar list of 26 Jan. 1599. These warrants are in _Addl. MS._ 5750, ff. 114, 116. They are original warrants for the 'watching liveries' which were issued annually, but on irregular dates, to the Yeomen of the Guard and to the Groom Porter and fourteen Grooms of the Chamber. A complete series of copies of these warrants is preserved in _Lord Chamberlain's Records_, v. 90, 91, and shows that Henslowe only received a watching livery during three consecutive years, on 14 Nov. 1597, 26 Jan. 1599, and 27 Oct. 1599. Yet we know that he was a Groom in Aug. 1593 from the address on one of Alleyn's letters (_Henslowe Papers_, 36), and about 1595-6 from a petition to the first Lord Hunsdon, who died in June 1596 (_Henslowe Papers_, 44). Therefore the absence of his name from the livery list of 7 April 1592 is no proof that he was not then already a Groom. Probably Henslowe was only an Extraordinary Groom, and only some of the Extraordinary Grooms were needed to supplement the twelve Ordinary ones for watching purposes.]

[Footnote 1010: Dr. Greg (Henslowe, ii. 22, 25) shows that Henslowe almost certainly held a lease of the Barge, the Bell, and the Cock 'vppon the banke called Stewes', describes these houses as 'licensed brothels', and infers that Henslowe was 'the intermediate landlord between the stew-keepers and the Reverend Father in God, the Lord Bishop of Winchester'. It is possible that the tradition, as well as the name, of the district endured into Elizabeth's reign, but Dr. Greg forgets, in his Voltairean mood, that the system of episcopal licences terminated in the reign of Henry VIII (Rendle, _Bankside_, xi). Ultimately Alleyn secured on the property the settlement of his wife Constance, daughter of John Donne, Dean of St. Paul's, which must surely have established its respectability.]

[Footnote 1011: Henslowe, i. 98, 'Jemes Cranwigge the 4 of November 1598 playd his callenge in my howsse & I sholde haue hade for my parte xxxxˢ which the company hath receuyd & oweth yᵗ to me'.]

[Footnote 1012: Cf. vol. ii, p. 408.]

[Footnote 1013: Cf. Gosson, _S.A._ 39 (App. C, No. xxii), 'the very hyrelings of some of our players, which stand at reuersion of vi s by the weeke'; Dekker, _News from Hell_ (_Works_, ii. 146), 'a companie of country players, being nine in number, one sharer, & the rest iornymen'; _The Raven's Almanac_ (iv. 193), 'a number of you (especially the hirelings) shall be with emptie purses at least twice a week'; _Jests to Make you Merrie_ (ii. 353), 'Nay, you mercenary soldiers, or you that are as the Switzers to players (I meane the hired men) by all the prognostications that I haue seene this yeare, you make but a hard and a hungry liuing of it by strowting [? 'strowling'] up and downe after the waggon. Leaue therefore, O leaue the company of such as lick the fat from your beards (if you haue any) and come hether, for here I know you shall be sharers'.]

[Footnote 1014: Cf. Chapman, _May Day_, III. iii. 228, 'Afore heaven, 'tis a sweet fac'd child: methinks he would show well in woman's attire.... I'll help thee to three crownes a week for him, and she can act well'. The will of Augustine Phillips in 1605 mentions his apprentice James Sands, and his late apprentice, Samuel Gilburne. The 'boys' of various Admiral's men appear in Henslowe's diary and in the Dulwich 'plots' of plays; cf. Henslowe, i. 71, 73, 'Thomas Dowtones biger boy'; _Henslowe Papers_, 137, 138, 142, 147, 'E. Dutton his boye', 'Mʳ. Allens boy', 'Mʳ. Townes boy', 'Mʳ. Jones his boy', 'Mʳ. Denygtens little boy'.]

[Footnote 1015: Henslowe, i. 201; _Henslowe Papers_, 48. There is also a contract by which Thomas Downton of the Admiral's men hires an unnamed player (Henslowe, i. 40). Augustine Phillips (1605) calls Christopher Beeston his 'servant', and Nicholas Tooley (1623) calls Richard Burbadge, then deceased, his 'late master'. But Beeston and Tooley were King's men by patent before the dates in question, and it is a little difficult, though not impossible, to suppose that a hireling would appear in a patent. Probably the terms only retain the memory of former apprenticeships.]

[Footnote 1016: Henslowe, ii. 120.]

[Footnote 1017: The diary records loans to Jonson, Chapman, Porter, Chettle, Day, Haughton, Munday, Dekker, Anthony Wadeson, and Robert Wilson, and to the actors Martin Slater, John Singer, Thomas Towne, Edward Dutton, Robert Shaw, Thomas Downton, William Borne, John Helle, Gabriel Spencer, Richard Alleyn, John Tomson, Humphrey Jeffes, Anthony Jeffes, Richard Jones, Charles Massey, John Duke, Richard Bradshaw, Thomas Heywood, William Kempe, Thomas Blackwood, John Lowin, Abraham Savery, Richard Perkins; as well as to Henslowe's nephew, Francis Henslowe. Except Francis Henslowe and Abraham Savery, of the Queen's men, and John Tomson, of whom nothing is known, all these men are traceable in connexion with either the Admiral's or Worcester's men. A few of the loans to poets, e.g. to Chettle, seem to have been on behalf of the Admiral's men, rather than of Henslowe himself.]

[Footnote 1018: Henslowe, i. 47, 63, 67, 'Rᵈ. of Bengemenes Johnsones share as ffoloweth'; 'Rᵈ. of Gabrell Spencer at severall tymes of his share in the gallereyes as foloweth'; 'A juste acownte of the money which I haue receued of Humfreye Jeaffes hallffe sheare ... as foloweth.... This some was payd backe agayne vnto the companey of my lord admeralles players ... & they shared yt amonste them'. In such cases Henslowe may merely have acted as agent of the company in securing the payment out of gallery money of sums due from incoming sharers.]

[Footnote 1019: _Henslowe Papers_, 18, 23, 86, 111, 123; cf. ch. xiii (Lady Elizabeth's).]

[Footnote 1020: Cf. p. 375.]

[Footnote 1021: Henslowe, ii. 19.]

[Footnote 1022: _Henslowe Papers_, 90, 93; cf. ch. xiii (Prince Charles's).]

[Footnote 1023: _Henslowe Papers_, 67, 70.]

[Footnote 1024: Henslowe, ii. 19.]

[Footnote 1025: Similar methods were employed by Henslowe's rival, Francis Langley, at the Swan (q.v.) in 1597. He provided apparel for a company, and was allowed for it out of their 'moytie of the gains for the seuerall standinges in the galleries of the said howse which belonged to them'. Having quarrelled with the company before he was completely reimbursed, he kept the apparel. He took individual bonds to play with him for three years, released some of the company from their bonds, and sued the rest, who could not play without their fellows, for breach of contract.]

[Footnote 1026: J. Hall, _Virgedemiarum_ (1597), i. 3, appears to satirize performances by amateurs 'upon a hired stage'; cf. p. 361.]

[Footnote 1027: Similarly in _Keysar v. Burbadge_ (1610) the pleadings of Robert Keysar grossly exaggerated the profits of the Blackfriars.]

[Footnote 1028: Cf. ch. vii.]

[Footnote 1029: Cf. App. B.]

[Footnote 1030: _Variorum_, iii. 266.]

[Footnote 1031: Lee, 315; cf. A. Thaler, _Shakespeare's Income_ (_S. P._ xv. 82), who halves Lee's estimate.]

[Footnote 1032: In 1628 Sir Henry Herbert notes in his office-book (_Variorum_, iii. 176), 'The Kinges company with a general consent and alacritye [poor devils! E. K. C.] have given mee the benefitt of too dayes in the yeare, the one in summer, thother in winter, to bee taken out of the second daye of a revived playe, att my owne choyse. The housekeepers have likewyse given their shares, their dayly charge only deducted, which comes to some 2ˡ 5ˢ. this 25 May, 1628.' Herbert words it oddly, but the 'dayly charge' must be that of the sharers, not the housekeepers, who had none, and the estimate agrees fairly with that of 1635. Herbert took during 1628-33 sums of from £1 5_s._ to £6 7_s._, averaging £4 8_s._ 6_d._, out of five performances at the Globe, and £9 16_s._ to £17 10_s._, averaging £13 10_s._, from five performances at the Blackfriars. The gross takings averaged therefore £6 13_s._ 6_d._ at the Globe and £15 15_s._ at the Blackfriars. In 1633 Herbert compounded for a payment of £10 at Christmas and £10 at Midsummer. But in 1662 (_Variorum_, iii. 266) he included amongst the incomings of his office the profits of a summer's day and a winter's day at the Blackfriars, which he valued at £50 each.]

[Footnote 1033: Cf. p. 363 and ch. xiii (Admiral's).]

[Footnote 1034: Cf. W. W. Greg in _T. L. S._ (12 Feb. 1920) and his analysis of the Dulwich 'plots' (_H. P._ 152). Here also we find the tireman, gatherers, and attendants used as 'supers'.]

[Footnote 1035: Puttenham, i. 14, says that Roscius 'brought vp these vizards, which we see at this day vsed'. In _The Longer Thou Livest_, 1748, 1796, God's Judgement has 'a terrible visure' and Confusion 'an ill fauowred visure', and in _All For Money_, 389, 1440, 1462, Damnation, Judas, and Dives have vizards. But this is early evidence, and perhaps drawn from the private stage. Harington, _Metamorphosis of Ajax_ (1596, _An Anatomy_, 5), speaks of 'an ill-favoured vizor, such as I have seen in stage plays, when they dance Machachinas', but this rather tells against the use by ordinary actors at that date.]

[Footnote 1036: Women only began to act regularly at the Restoration; cf. Ward, iii. 253. There had been occasional earlier examples; even in 1611 Coryat, _Crudities_, i. 386, says that at Venice 'I saw women acte, a thing that I never saw before, though I have heard that it hathe beene sometimes used in London'. The exceptions are, I think, such as prove the rule; private plays such as _Hymen's Triumph_, Venner's gulling show of _England's Joy_, the Italian tumblers of 1574, the virago Moll Frith at the Fortune (cf. ch. xxiii, s.v. Dekker, _Roaring Girl_). On 22 Feb. 1583 Richard Madox 'went to the theater to see a scurvie play set out al by one virgin, which there proved a fyemarten without voice, so that we stayed not the matter' (_Cotton MSS. App._ xlvii, f. 6ᵛ; cf. _S. P. Colonial, E. Indies_, 221). As to the skill of the boys, cf. Ben Jonson on Richard Robinson in _The Devil is an Ass_, II. viii. 64.]

[Footnote 1037: Halliwell-Phillipps, i. 316.]

[Footnote 1038: Cf. ch. xvi (Swan).]

[Footnote 1039: Cf. ch. xiii (Admiral's).]

[Footnote 1040: Cf. ch. vii.]

[Footnote 1041: Cf. ch. xiii (Admiral's).]

[Footnote 1042: Cf. the account of Platter in 1599 (ch. xvi, introduction); also Donne, _Satire_, iv. 180 (ed. _Muses' Library_, ii. 196):

As fresh and sweet their apparels be, as be
The fields they sold to buy them. 'For a king
Those hose are,' cry the flatterers; and bring
Them next week to the theatre to sell;

and Jonson, _Underwoods_, xxxii:

Is it for these that Fine-man meets the street
Coached, or on foot-cloth, thrice changed every day,
To teach each suit he has the ready way
From Hyde Park to the stage, where at the last
His dear and borrowed bravery he must cast.
]

[Footnote 1043: Cf. App. C, Nos. xxx, xlvi; _Case Is Altered_, ii. 4, 'Theatres! ay, and plays too, both tragedy and comedy, and set forth with as much state as can be imagined'; cf. Graves, 68.]

[Footnote 1044: Cf. chh. xx, xxi _passim_, and _Henslowe Papers_, 113.]

[Footnote 1045: Wegener, 135.]

[Footnote 1046: _Henslowe Papers_, 117, 'j lyone skin; j beares skyne ... j dragon in fostes [_Faustus_] j lyone; ij lyone heades; j great horse with his leages; j black dogge'. For brown paper monsters, cf. App. C, Nos. xxii, xxx, and for a controversy as to the use of live animals, ch. xx.]

[Footnote 1047: _E. Hoe_, IV. ii. 92, 'thy name shall be written upon conduits, and thy deeds plaid i' thy lifetime by the best companies of actors, and be call'd their get-peny'; _Barth. Fair_, V. i. 13 (of a 'motion'), 'the _Gunpowder-plot_, there was a get-peny! I haue presented that to an eighteene, or twenty pence audience, nine times in an afternoone'. Dekker, _News from Hell_ (1606, _Works_, ii. 146), speaks of 'a Cobler of Poetrie called a play-patcher'.]

[Footnote 1048: Henslowe, ii. 115; cf. ch. x. By the end of Sir Henry Herbert's time the fee had been raised to £2; even for an old play he exacted £1 (_Variorum_, iii. 266).]

[Footnote 1049: C. IS A. I. i.]

[Footnote 1050: _Henslowe_, i. 113, 136 (Admiral's, 1599, 1601), 181 (Worcester's, 1602), 'for Mʳ. Mundaye & the reste of the poets at the playnge of Sʳ John Oldcastell the ferste tyme' [_in margin_, 'as a gefte']; 'John Daye ... after the playinge of the 2 part of Strowde'; 'Thomas Deckers ... over & above his price of his boocke called A Medysen for a Cvrste Wiffe'. These are exceptional disbursements. The Daborne-Henslowe correspondence of 1613-14 (_Henslowe Papers_, 71, 75, 76, 82) suggests a more regular practice: 'I pay you half my earnings in the play'; 'We will hav but twelv pownds and the overplus of the second day'; 'You shall hav the whole companies bonds to pay you the first day of my play being playd'; 'I desyr you should disburse but 12ˡ a play till they be playd'. Probably the actual day selected for the poet's benefit varied; thus the third day is suggested by Dekker's prologue to _If It be not Good, the Devil is in It_ (1612), a Red Bull play:

not caring, so he gains
A cram'd third day, what filth drops from his brains.

Malone (_Variorum_, iii. 157) quotes later evidence for a variation of days, together with Davenant, _The Play-house to be Let_:

There is an old tradition,
That in the times of mighty Tamberlane,
Of conjuring Faustus and the Beauchamps bold,
You poets used to have the second day.
This shall be ours, sir, and tomorrow yours.

The actual term 'benefit' appears first in connexion with the interest of the Master of the Revels (cf. p. 370), not that of the poet. Nor do we know what exactly the 'overplus' assigned to the poet was calculated upon.]

[Footnote 1051: _B. Fair_, V. iii. 30, 'What, doe you not know the _Author_, fellow _Filcher_? you must take no money of him; he must come in _gratis_: Mʳ. _Littlewit_ is a voluntary; he is the _Author_'.]

[Footnote 1052: Henslowe, i. 83, 100, 101, 107, 119 (Admiral's, 1598-1600), 'to disecharge Mʳ. Dicker owt of the cownter in the Powltrey'; 'Harey Chettell to paye his charges in the Marshallsey'; 'to descarge Thomas Dickers frome the areaste of my lord chamberlens men'; 'to descarge Harey Chettell of his areste from Ingrome'; 'Wᵐ Harton to releace hime owt of the Clyncke'; also Henslowe, i. 103, 165 (Admiral's, 1599, 1602), 'Harey Porter ... gaue me his faythfulle promysse that I shold haue alle the boockes which he writte ether him sellfe or with any other'; 'at the sealleynge of H. Chettells band to writte for them'.]

[Footnote 1053: _Henslowe Papers_, 67; cf. ch. xiii (Lady Elizabeth's).]

[Footnote 1054: Henslowe, ii. 20.]

[Footnote 1055: Lodge, _Scillaes Metamorphosis_ (1589):

by oath he bound me
To write no more of that whence shame doth grow,
Or tie my pen to Pennie-knaves delight.
]

[Footnote 1056: The pun on 'comoedians' and 'camoelions' had been made by 'certayne gentlemen' against the Duttons as early as 1580; cf. ch. xiii (Warwick's). It is still in use in _Ratseis Ghost_ (1605); cf. p. 340, n. 2.]

[Footnote 1057: The Aesopic allusion is complicated by another to the story in Macrobius, _Saturnalia_, ii. 4, 30, perhaps based on Martial, xiv. 73, of the cobbler who tried to teach a crow to say 'Ave Caesar' in flattery of Augustus after the battle of Actium; cf. Mr. McKerrow's note to Nashe's _Pierce Penilesse_ (_Works_, iv. 105). Both ideas are suggested in Nashe's _Menaphon_ preface, and Greene, in _Francescos Fortunes_ (App. C, No. xliii), combines them with a third story, also due, perhaps through Cornelius Agrippa (App. C, No. xii), to Macrobius (_Sat._ III. xiv. 12), of a debate on the respective powers of orator and actor between Cicero and Roscius, into an obviously apocryphal jest: '_Cicero._ Why _Roscius_, art thou proud with _Esops_ Crow, being pranct with the glory of others feathers? Of thy selfe thou canst say nothing, and if the Cobler hath taught thee to say _Aue Caesar_, disdain not thy tutor, because thou pratest in a kings chamber.' Fleay, i. 258, chooses to identify the cobbler with Marlowe and Roscius with Robert Wilson, and (being ignorant of Macrobius) cites the use of the phrase 'Ave Caesar' in _Edward III_, I. i. 164, which he ascribes to Marlowe, as evidence. Such equations are always hazardous. The point of the passage is in the indebtedness of the players as a body to the poets as a body. If any individual actor were designated as Roscius about 1590, it would be more likely to be Alleyn than another; the compliment to him is not unusual later (cf. ch. xv). But he had hardly a monopoly of the name; and in the present case there is really no reason to suppose that Greene had any individual in mind, other than the historical Roscius. The name is given to Ostler (q.v.) in 1611, and was in common generic use for a player; cf. e.g. Marston, _Satires_ (1598), ii. 42:

That fair-framed piece of sweetest poesy,
Which Muto put between his mistress' paps ...
Was penned by Roscio the tragedian;

and _Scourge of Villainy_ (1598), xi. 40:

Say who acts best? Drusus or Roscio?

Similarly Fleay, ii. 279, has no real ground for supposing that the player in the _Groatsworth of Wit_ is Wilson in particular. If, again, any individual is meant, it might just as well be James Burbage. Throughout Fleay is inclined to exaggerate the extent of the theatrical references in the pamphlets of Greene and Nashe. But R. Simpson is much worse in his hopelessly uncritical Introduction to _Faire Em_ in _The School of Shakspere_, ii. 339, which is an attempt to trace a _vendetta_ against the actors and especially Shakespeare as a main motive in Greene's writing from 1584 onwards. As far as I can see, Greene's attacks on the stage are limited to the three pamphlets named in the text, and Nashe's to the _Menaphon_ preface. It is doubtful whether Greene was writing for the stage at all before about 1590; in any case it may be assumed that neither writer was normally engaged in tilting against his paymasters.]

[Footnote 1058: Cuthbert Conny-Catcher, _The Defence of Conny-Catching_ (1592, Greene, _Works_, xi. 75), 'What if I should prove you a Conny-Catcher, Maister _R. G._ would it not make you blush at the matter?... Aske the Queens Players, if you sold them not _Orlando Furioso_ for twenty Nobles, and when they were in the country sold the same Play to the Lord Admirals men for as much more. Was not this plaine _Conny-Catching_, Maister _R. G._?... But I hear, when this was objected, you made this excuse; that there was no more faith to be held with players than with them that valued faith at the price of a feather; for as they were comedians to act, so the actions of their lives were Camelion-like; that they were uncertain, variable, time-pleasers, men that measured honesty by profit, and that regarded their authors not by desert, but by necessity of time.']

[Footnote 1059: Dekker, _Jests to Make you Merrie_ (1607, _Works_, ii. 303, 352), 'As proud as a player that feedes on the fruité of diuine poetry (as swine on acorns).... O you that are the Poets of these sinfull times, ouer whome the Players haue now got the vpper hand, by making fooles of the poore country people, in driuing them like flockes of geese to sit cackling in an old barne: and to swallow downe those playes for new which here euery punck and her squire (like the interpreter and his poppet) can rand out by heart they are so stale, and therefore so stincking; I know the Lady Pecunia and you come very hardly together, & therefore trouble not you'; cf. his references to 'strowlers' in note to p. 332. Another seventeenth-century critic is H[enry] P[arrot], _Laquei Ridiculosi or Springes for Woodcocks_ (1613), _Epig._ 131, _Theatrum Licentia_:

Cotta's become a player most men know,
And will no longer take such toyling paines;
For here's the spring (saith he) whence pleasures flow
And brings them damnable excessive gaines:
That now are cedars growne from shrubs and sprigs,
Since Greene's _Tu Quoque_ and those Garlicke Jigs.
]

[Footnote 1060: _Mediaeval Stage_, ii. 194, 214. For Elizabethan school-plays at Shrewsbury, cf. ch. xxiii, s.v. Ashton. Murray, ii. 204, 216, 243, 324, 364, 382, records plays by schoolboys or other children at Bath (1602), Bristol (1594), Coventry (1601-2), Ludlow (1562, 1575-6), Norwich (1564-5), Plymouth (Totnes boys, 1564-74).]

[Footnote 1061: _Poetaster_, III. iv. 344, 'O, it will get vs a huge deale of money, Captaine, and wee haue need on't; for this winter ha's made vs all poorer, then so many staru'd snakes: No bodie comes at vs; not a gentleman, nor a ----.']

[Footnote 1062: _Hamlet_, II. ii. 339. This is the Folio text. The Second Quarto omits all but the first ten lines, but that there was some reference to the children in the original version of the play, the date of which may be 1601, is shown by the First Quarto text:

_Hamlet._ How comes it that they trauell? Do they grow restie?

_Gilderstone._ No my lord, their reputation holds as it was
wont.

_Hamlet._ How then?

_Gilderstone._ Yfaith my Lord, noueltie carries it away,
For the principali publike audience that
Came to them, are turned to private playes,
And to the humour of children.
]

[Footnote 1063: The main interest of the 'war of the theatres', or 'Poetomachia' as Dekker, _Satiromastix_, Epist. 10, calls it, is for literature and biography, rather than for stage-history. I refer to it under the plays concerned in chh. xxiii, xxiv, and can only add a brief summary here. The treatment of R. A. Small, _The Stage Quarrel_ (1899), is excellent, and may be supplemented by H. C. Hart's papers, _Gabriel Harvey_, _Marston and Ben Jonson_ (_9 N. Q._ xi. 201, 281, 343, 501; xii. 161, 263, 342, 403, 482) and _On Carlo Buffone_ (_10 N. Q._ i. 381), while the less critical view, partly derived from Fleay, of J. H. Penniman, _The War of the Theatres_ (1897), is revised in his edition of _Poetaster_ and _Satiromastix_. The protagonists are Jonson and Marston, with whom became allied Dekker. Daniel and many others, whose names have been brought under discussion, do not seem to have been really concerned. Jonson himself tells us, in the _Apologetical Dialogue_, probably written late in 1601, to _Poetaster_ that 'three yeeres, They did provoke me with their petulant stiles On every stage'. This takes us to 1599, up to which year there is no just ground for suggesting any conflict between Jonson and Marston. Jonson may then have taken offence at Marston's portrait of him, intended to be complimentary, as Chrisoganus in _Histriomastix_. In the same year he criticized Marston's style in _E. M. O._ In 1600 Marston satirized Jonson as Brabant Senior in _Jack Drum's Entertainment_, and in 1601 as Lampatho Doria in _What You Will_. Jonson in turn brought Marston into _Poetaster_ (1601) as Crispinus, and added Dekker as Demetrius. Dekker retorted a month or two later with his caricature of Jonson as Horace in _Satiromastix_. Some unascertained part in the 'purge' given to Jonson is ascribed in _3 Parnassus_ (1601) to Shakespeare. Jonson and Marston seem to have been reconciled by 1603; but the dispute had not been merely a paper one, for Jonson, _Conversations_, 11, 20, claims that he 'beat Marston, and took his pistol from him'.]

[Footnote 1064: Small, 67, has an excellent analysis of _Histriomastix_. He dates it in 1596, but not convincingly. It might just as well be 1588-90. The text is in R. Simpson, _The School of Shakespeare_, ii. 1, and needs re-editing. Moreover, Simpson thought that Posthaste was Shakespeare. The actor-scenes are i. 112-62; ii. 70-147, 188-344; iii. 179-243, 265-78; iv. 159-201; v. 61-102, 238-43; vi. 187-240. Of these I think that ii. 247-80; iii. 179-217, 265-78 may belong to the Marstonian revision.]

[Footnote 1065: Cf. _Hamlet_, II. ii. 415, 'The best actors in the world, either for tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, tragical-historical, tragical-comical-historical-pastoral, scene individable, or poem unlimited'.]

[Footnote 1066: _Poetaster_, III. iv; IV. iv; V. iii. 108-38.]

[Footnote 1067: Can the Aesop episode be a reminiscence of the part played by Augustine Phillips in the Essex innovation? Cf. vol. ii, p. 205.]

[Footnote 1068: _2 Return from Parnassus_, iv. 3; v. 1.]

[Footnote 1069: In certain other plays which have actors amongst their dramatis personae (e.g. _Midsummer-Night's Dream_ and Middleton's _Mayor of Queenborough_) the point is reversed, and it is the regular companies who satirize provincial companies or amateurs.]

[Footnote 1070: Thus in 1618 the Mayor of Exeter complained of a company travelling under Daniel's patent for the Children of Bristol (q.v.) that, though the patent was for children, the company consisted of men, with only five youths amongst them.]

[Footnote 1071: Cf. ch. xii, introduction.]

[Footnote 1072: Cf. App. C, No. lviii.]

[Footnote 1073: Murray, ii. 235, 400, 410.]

[Footnote 1074: Ibid. 199, 231, 264, 312, 341, 384, &c.]

[Footnote 1075: The Order was appended to _A Declaration of the Lords and Commons Assembled in Parliament, For the appeasing and quietting of all unlawfull Tumults and Insurrections in the severall Counties of England, and Dominion of Wales_ (1642). The whole pamphlet is facsimiled in J. Knight's edition of J. Downes, _Roscius Anglicanus_ (1886).]

[Footnote 1076: Hazlitt, _E. D. S._ 65.]

[Footnote 1077: Wright, _Historia Histrionica_, 409, 411.]

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| TRANSCRIBER NOTES. |
| |
| P. xvii 'Litteratur' changed to 'Literatur'. |
| P. xxxiii 'Antient' changed to 'Ancient'. |
| P. xxxiv 'O. S.' changed to 'C. S.'. |
| P. xxxviii. 'Smith' changed to 'Strype'; moved alphabetically.|
| P. xxxix 'Stow' changed to 'Stowe'. |
| Footnote numbers that were left off are added on pages 95-97. |
| P. 315. Added missing footnote number. |
| P. 330. Added missing footnote number. |
| P. 363. Added missing footnote number. |
| Corrected various punctuation. |
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