Chapter XXVIII: Introduction: The Public Theatres (10)

[87] Matthew Welder appears as a lute and viol at Court in 1516 and 1517. Peter Welder was appointed in 1519 and is traceable to 1559, as a lute, viol, or flute. Henry van Wilder was a ‘musician’, 1553–8. Philip Welder or van Wilder himself is first noted as a ‘minstrel’ in 1526. Later he was a lute up to 1554. In 1547 he was also ‘of the Privy Chamber’ and keeper of the King’s musical instruments (Nagel, 6, 13, 15, 16, 18, 22, 24, 27; Lafontaine, 8, 9, 12; Brewer, i, cxi). He died 24 Jan. 1554, leaving a son, Henry, probably the one noted above (Fry, _London Inquisitions_, i. 117). The _Chamber Accounts_ for 1538–41 show an allowance to him of £70 ‘for six singing children’ (Stopes, 12). Several references to ‘Philippe and his fellows yong mynstrels’ and to ‘the children that be in the keeping of Philip and Edmund Harmon’ appear in Green Cloth documents from 30 June 1538 to 1544 (_H. O._ 166, 172, 191, 208; _Genealogist_, xxx. 23). Edmund Harmon was one of the royal Barbers. Finally, livery lists of 1547 show nine singing men and children under ‘M^r. Phelips’ (Lafontaine, 7). An earlier company of ‘the King’s young minstrels’ than this of 1538–50 seems to have been lodged at court _c._ 1526 (Brewer, iv. 1. 865), and there were ‘troyes autres nos ioesnes ministralx’ as far back as 1369 (_Life Records of Chaucer_, iv. 174). Elizabethan fee lists continue to make provision for ‘six children for singing’, but there is no indication that the posts were filled up.

[88] Wallace, ii. 63, from docquet in _B. M. Royal MS._ 18, C. xxiv, f. 232. By an obvious error, the name is written by the clerk as ‘Gowre’.

[89] Wallace, i. 77.

[90] Cf. p. 12.

[91] It is possible that the Treasurer of the Chamber did not pay all the rewards for plays during the earlier years of the reign; but the suggestion of Wallace, i. 108, that, if we had the _Books of Queen’s Payments_, more information might be available, seems to show a failure to realize the identity of the Tudor _Books of King’s Payments_ with the _T. of C. Accounts_. There might, however, be rewards in a book subsidiary to the _Privy Purse Accounts_. I do not think that much can be made of the recital of ‘playes’ as well as ‘maskes’ in the preamble of the _Revels Accounts_ for 1558–9, during which the T. of C. paid no rewards, since this may be merely ‘common form’.

[92] Feuillerat, _Eliz._ 34; cf. Appendix A. Naturally no ‘reward’ would be paid in such circumstances. Fleay, 16, 32, 60, conjectures that the play was _Misogonus_.

[93] Strype, _Survey of London_ (App. i. 92), gives the date from Bower’s tombstone at Greenwich, and as his death is recited in Edwardes’ patent (Stopes, _Hunnis_, 146) and his will of 18 June 1561 was proved on 25 Aug. 1561 (Wallace, i. 106), it is clear that the entry of Rimbault, 1, ‘1563. Rich. Bower died, M^r of the children, A^o 5^{to}’, must be an error.

[94] Wallace, _Blackfriars_, 65, from Privy Seal in P. R. O. The patent dated 10 Jan. 1562 is on _Patent Rolls, 4 Eliz._ p. 6, m. 14 _dorso_.

[95] This is recorded in a Revels document, and seems a clear case of a play given by the Chapel and not paid for by the T. of C.

[96] Cf. ch. vii, p. 223.

[97] Rimbault, 2. On Hunnis, cf. ch. xxiii.

[98] Stopes, 295, translates the patent of appointment from _Auditors Patent Books_, ix, f. 144^v; the Privy Seal is in _Privy Seals_, Series iii, 1175. Stopes also prints the patent and Wallace, ii. 66, the Signet Bill (misdescribing it as a Privy Seal) for the commission; it is enrolled on _Patent Rolls, 9 Eliz._ p. 10, m. 16 _dorso_. It is varied from the model of 1562 by the inclusion of power to the Master to take up lodging for the children in transit, and to fix ‘reasonable prises’ for carriage and necessaries at his discretion.

[99] Hazlitt-Warton, iv. 217, citing f. xii of the pamphlet. I know of no copy. One is catalogued among Bishop Tanner’s books in the Bodleian, but Stopes, 226, ‘went to Oxford on purpose to see it, but found that it had utterly vanished’. Macray, _Annals of the Bodleian_, 211, thinks that it may have been destroyed when Tanner’s books fell into a river during their transit from Norwich to Oxford in Dec. 1731. The pamphlet is also cited for an example of the use of the term ‘spur money’ (Bumpus, 29, with date ‘1598’). F. T. Hibgame (_10 N. Q._ i. 458) describes a collection of pamphlets seen by him in New York under the general title of _The Sad Decay of Discipline in our Schools_ (1830), which included _Some Account of the Stripping and Whipping of the Children of the Chapel_, containing a ‘realistic account of the treatment of the boys at one of the royal chapels’, of which he thought the author might be George Colman.

[100] Cf. ch. vii.

[101] Feuillerat, _Eliz._ 244, ‘Holly, Ivye, firr poles & Mosse for the Rock ... Hornes iij, Collers iij, Leashes iij & dogghookes iij with Bawdrickes for the hornes in Hvnnyes playe’.

[102] _Variorum_, iii. 439.

[103] Cf. ch. xxiii (Gascoigne).

[104] W. Creizenach (_Sh.-Jahrbuch_, liv. 73) points out that the source must have been Livy, xxvi. 50.

[105] Cf. _infra_ (Windsor).

[106] Rimbault, 2.

[107] Cf. ch. xvii (Blackfriars). The bare fact of this early use of the Blackfriars has, of course, long been known from the reference to comedies at the Blackfriars in Gosson, _P. C._ 188 (App. C, No. xxx), and the prologues to Lyly’s _Campaspe_ and _Sapho and Phao_. Fleay, 36, 39, 40, guessed that the early Blackfriars performances were at an inn, and by the Paul’s boys, and that the euphuistic prose plays at the Bel Savage mentioned by Gosson, _S. A._ 39 (App. C, No. xxii), in 1579 were early Chapel versions of Lyly’s above-named plays. But there is no evidence that either of the boy companies ever used an inn.

[108] Cf. p. 38.

[109] Cf. ch. vii, p. 223.

[110] Rimbault, 3. The Blackfriars correspondence shows that the date 1581 given in Rimbault, 56, is wrong. A warrant of 1582 for a lease in reversion to his widow Anne is in _Hatfield MSS._ ii. 539.

[111] App. C, No. xlv.

[112] Cf. ch. xvii (Blackfriars).

[113] Wallace, i. 156; Stopes, _Hunnis_, 252; from _S. P. D. Eliz._ clxiii. 88.

[114] Cf. p. 50, which suggests that the boys occasionally ate in hall at festival times.

[115] The _Chamber Accounts_ show no renewal of the payments.

[116] Cf. ch. xxiii (Hunnis).

[117] Cf. ch. xiii (Oxford’s), ch. xxiii (Lyly).

[118] Feuillerat, _Eliz._ 470. _Sapho and Phao_ might, however, have been the unnamed Chapel play of Shrove Tuesday (27 Feb.) 1582.

[119] Perhaps Lyly was still associated with him. F. S. Boas (_M. L. R._ vi. 92) records payments in connexion with a visit by Leicester to Christ Church, Oxford, to Mr. Lyly and his man for the loan of apparel, as well as one of £5 to one Tipslowe ‘for the Revels’ (January 1585).

[120] Cf. _supra_ (Paul’s).

[121] I have no means of dating ‘The order of the show to be done at the Turret, entring into the parke at Grenewich, the musick being within the turrett’, which is preserved in _Egerton MS._ 2877, f. 182, as ‘acted before Q. Elizabeth’. A speech of forty lines beginning ‘He Jove himselfe, that guides the golden spheare’, was delivered by ‘one of the biggest children of her Ma^{tes} Chappell’ as Goodwill, and was followed by a song beginning ‘Ye Helicon muses’.

[122] Rimbault, 4. A note of Anthony Wood’s (cf. _D. N. B._) suggests that Bull joined the Chapel about 1572.

[123] Ashmole, _Antiquities of Berks_ (ed. 1723), iii. 172, from tombstone at St. George’s, Windsor. The inscription gives him 49 years as Master at Windsor, in error for 39. A second stone described as also his by Ashmole is clearly his wife’s.

[124] Wallace, ii. 59, prints both from the Privy Seals of 2 and 3 July in the R. O. The appointment is enrolled in _Patent Rolls, 39 Eliz._ p. 12, and the commission in _Patent Rolls, 39 Eliz._ p. 9, m. 7 _dorso_. The appointment is for life, the commission not so specified, and therefore during pleasure only.

[125] The operative words of the appointment are ‘pro nobis heredibus et successoribus nostris damus et concedimus dilecto seruienti nostro Nathanieli Giles officium Magistri puerorum Capellae nostrae Regiae ... habendum ... durante vita sua naturali Damus etiam ... praefato Nathanieli Giles vada siue feoda quadraginta librarum sterling percipienda annuatim ... pro eruditione duodecem puerorum eiusdem Capellae nostrae ac pro eorum conveniente exhibitione vestiturae et lectuarii ... vnacum omnibus et omnimodis aliis vadis feodis proficubus iurisdiccionibus aucthoritate priuilegiis commoditatibus regardis et aduantagiis quibuscunque eodem officio quoquo modo debitis ... ac ... praedicto Nathanieli Giles locum siue officium illud vnius generosorum nostrorum dictae Capellae nostrae Regiae ... vnacum feodo seu annuali redditu triginta librarum ...’

[126] _E. v. K._ 211; _K. v. P._ 224, 230, 233 (misdated 44 Eliz. for 42 Eliz.), 239. These are only short recitals in the lawsuits. Apparently the fragmentary descriptions of the theatre in Wallace, ii. 39, 40, 41, 43, 49, are from a fuller Latin text of the terms of the lease, possibly recited in a common-law suit, which he has not printed in full.

[127] _K. v. P._ 230, 234.

[128] Halliwell-Phillipps, i. 317.

[129] Fleay, 124, 153; Wallace, ii. 56; cf. _M. L. R._ iv. 156. An initial date for the enterprise in 1600 fits in exactly with the seven years during which there had been plays at the house where _K. B. P._ was produced and the ten years’ training of Keysar’s company up to 1610 (cf. p. 57).

[130] Cf. ch. xi.

[131] Fleay, 127. Burn, 152, notes from _Bodl. Tanner MS._ 300 that among the misdemeanours punished in the Star Chamber was ‘Taking up a gentleman’s son to be a stage player’.

[132] Wallace, ii. 84, gives the endorsed date omitted by Greenstreet and Fleay, as ‘Marti decimo quinto Decembris Anno xliiij Elizabeth Regine’; the date set down for trial is indicated as ‘p Octab Hillar’. This agrees with the time indication of the offence in the complaint itself as ‘about one yere last past, and since your maiesties last free and generall pardon’. The pardon referred to must be that of 1597–8 (_39 Eliz._ c. 28; cf. _R. O. Statutes_, iv. 952). There was another passed by the Parliament of 1601 (_43 Eliz._ c. 19; cf. _Statutes_, iv. 1010) for all offences prior to 7 Aug. 1601, but presumably this was not yet law when the complaint was drawn. The Parliament sat to 19 December. Clifton, however, was only just in time.

[133] _K. v. P._ 248. The date is recited as ‘in or about the three and ffortieth yeare’ of Elizabeth, i.e. 1600–1, which is not exact. The reference can hardly be to any other than the Clifton affair. No Chancery documents in the case, other than the complaint, are known. It may be presumed that censure fell on Giles and Robinson, as well as Evans, but they were not concerned in _K. v. P._ Evans, of course, was technically acting as deputy to Giles under his commission, and Wallace, ii. 71, is not justified in citing the case as evidence that ‘These powers to Giles were supplemented by official concessions to Henry Evans that enabled him to rent the Blackfriars theatre and train the Queen’s Children of the Chapel there, with remunerative privileges’.

[134] _K. v. P._ 224, 230, 236, 242, 244, 248, 250.

[135] _E. v. K._ 211, 216; _K. v. P._ 237, 240, 245. These are recitals. Wallace, ii. 91, says that he has found two copies of the original bond, but the text he prints adds nothing to _K. v. P._ 240. Clearly he is wrong in describing it as ‘containing the Articles of Agreement’. That was a much more detailed document, which Evans unfortunately thought so ‘long and tedious’ that he did not insert it at large in his Answer in _K. v. P._ It was doubtless analogous to the King’s Revels Articles of 1608 (cf. _infra_). It provided for the rights of the partners to the use of rooms (_E. v. K._ 211) and presumably for the division of profits (_K. v. P._ 237).

[136] _K. v. P._ 244. Wallace, ii. 102, adds the actual terms of the bond. He takes Evans’s explanation to mean that hitherto Evans had maintained the boys and the plays out of official funds supplied through Kirkham as Yeoman of the Revels, but that now Evans’s name was to be kept out of the business, and disbursements made by his partners, who were to pay him 8_s._ a week as a kind of steward. I cannot suppose that Kirkham had been the channel of any official subvention, and, on the whole, think it probable that the second ‘compl^t’ in the extract from the pleading is an error for ‘def^t’. This leaves it not wholly clear why Evans should allege his relief from great weekly disbursements as a reason for receiving 8_s._ a week; but if we had the Articles of Agreement, the point would probably be clear. Possibly Evans had in the past made the equivalent of a weekly sum of 8_s._ out of board-wages passed on to him by Giles.

[137] Wallace, ii. 88.

[138] _E. v. K._ 213, 217, 220.

[139] G. von Bülow and W. Powell in _R. H. S. Trans._ vi. 26; Wallace, ii. 105; with translations.

[140] Wallace, ii. 126, summarizes his theory; cf. my review in _M. L. R._ v. 224.

[141] Wallace, ii. 99.

[142] _E. v. K._ 217; _K. v. P._ 224, 227, 229, 231, 236, 248.

[143] Wallace, ii. 73.

[144] Wallace, ii. 75, shows that the Blackfriars repertory would require twenty or twenty-five actors.

[145] Gawdy, 117.

[146] Wallace, ii. 95. Dudley Carleton wrote to John Chamberlain on 29 Dec. 1601 (_S. P. D. Eliz._ cclxxxii. 48), ‘The Q: dined this day priuatly at my L^d Chamberlains; I came euen now from the blackfriers where I saw her at the play with all her candidae auditrices’; cf. _M. L. R._ ii. 12.

[147] _K. v. P._ 235.

[148] Wallace, ii. 89, says that Evans paid £11 0_s._ 2_d._ for repairs on 8 Dec. 1603.

[149] _M. S. C._ i. 267, from _Patent Roll, 1 Jac. I_, pt. 8. Collier, i. 340, and Hazlitt, _E. D. S._ 40, print the signet bill, the former dating it 30 Jan. and the latter 31 Jan., and misdescribe it as a privy seal. Collier, _N. F._ 48, printed a forged letter from Daniel to Sir T. Egerton (cf. Ingleby, 244, 247) intended to suggest that Drayton, and perhaps also Shakespeare, had coveted his post.

[150] Wallace, ii. 80, mentions a case of the employment of a boy at the Blackfriars during James’s reign under a contract with his mother.

[151] _M. S. C._ i. 359. On 7 Oct. 1605 the Wardrobe provided holland for shirts for the 12 children and ‘for James Cutler, a Chappell boy gone off’ (Lafontaine, 46, from _L. C._ 804).

[152] Rimbault, 60; Stowe, _Annales_ (ed. Howes), 1037. An order of 17 July 1604 (_H. O._ 301) continued the allowance of an increase of meat at festival times which the children had presumably enjoyed under Elizabeth.

[153] Middleton, _Father Hubbard’s Tales_ (_Works_, viii. 64, 77). A reference in the same book to an ant as ‘this small actor in less than decimo sexto’ recalls the jest in the Induction to the _Malcontent_ at the boys who played _Jeronimo_ ‘in decimo sexto’.

[154] Cf. ch. xi.

[155] _K. v. B._ 340.

[156] Cf. ch. xxiii, s.v. plays named.

[157] Kirkham and Kendall were still associated in Aug. 1605, when apparel and properties were obtained from them for the plays at James’s visit to Oxford (_M. S. C._ i. 247). There was a performance at the Blackfriars as late as 16 June 1605 (Wallace, ii. 125), a date connected with a dispute in settlement of which Kirkham’s bond of £50 to Evans was exchanged for a new one to Hawkins (_K. v. P._ 244).

[158] Cf. _M. L. R._ iv. 159. The t.p. of _Sophonisba_ only specifies performance ‘at the Blackfriars’; those of _The Fleir_ and _The Isle of Gulls_ ‘by the Children of the Revels at the Blackfriars’. Probably the ‘Children of the Revels’ of the t.p. of Day’s _Law Tricks_ (1608) is also the Blackfriars company. No theatre is named, but the play is too early for the King’s Revels, who, moreover, do not seem to be described on other t.ps. as ‘Children of the Revels’ pure and simple. I take it that these t.p. descriptions follow the designations of the companies in use when the plays were last on the stage before publication, rather than those in use at the times of first production.

[159] Cf. ch. x.

[160] Cf. ch. xxiii, s.v. Day.

[161] Keysar was certainly associated with Kendall by the Christmas of 1606–7, when they supplied apparel and properties for the Westminster plays; cf. Murray, ii. 169.

[162] _K. v. P._ 249.

[163] _M. S. C._ i. 362, from _P. R. O., Patent Roll, 4 James I_, p. 18, _dorso_. Collier, i. 446, long ago noted the existence of a similar clause in a Caroline commission to Giles of 1626. It was probably the choristers who assisted in a quasi-dramatic performance on 16 July 1607, when James dined with the Merchant Taylors, and Giles received the freedom of the company in reward; cf. ch. iv.

[164] Cf. App. I.

[165] _E. v. K._ 221; _K. v. P._ 246. ‘The Children of the Revells’ who appeared at Leicester on 21 Aug. 1608 (Kelly, 248) might have been these boys, but might also have been the King’s Revels, if the King’s Revels were still in existence under that name, which is very doubtful.

[166] Cf. ch. xxiii, s.v. Chapman.

[167] _S. P. D. Jac. I_, xxxi. 73. The mine was no doubt the silver mine discovered at Hilderston near Linlithgow in 1607, and worked as a royal enterprise with little success; cf. R. W. Cochran-Patrick, _Early Records relating to Mining in Scotland_ (1878), xxxvii. 116.

[168] Cf. ch. xxiii.

[169] _K. v. B._ 342.

[170] _E. v. K._ 222; _K. v. P._ 225, 231, 235, 246.

[171] Cf. ch. xvii (Blackfriars).

[172] _K. v. P._ 225, 249.

[173] _E. v. K._ 221; _K. v. P._ 245. In the earlier suit Evans says that the royal prohibition was ‘vpon some misdemeanors committed in or about the plaies there, and specially vpon the defendants [Kirkham’s] acts and doings thereabout’. Unless Kirkham was more directly concerned in the management during 1608 than appears probable, Evans must be reflecting upon the whole series of misdemeanours since 1604.

[174] On 9 May John Browne, ‘one of the playe boyes’, was buried at St. Anne’s.

[175] _K. v. B._ 347, gives the date of surrender in 1610 as ‘about the tenth of August last past’. Probably a year’s sub-tenancy under the King’s men explains the discrepancy with the ‘about August in the sixt year of his Majesties raigne’ of _K. v. P._ 235, and the confirmatory date of the King’s men’s leases.

[176] Cf. ch. _supra_ (Paul’s). _K. v. B._ 355 tells us that Rosseter was in partnership with Keysar.

[177] _M. S. C._ i. 271, from _P. R., 7 Jac. I_, p. 13. Ingleby, 254, gave the material part in discussing a forged draft by Collier (_N. F._ 41), in which the names of the patentees are given as ‘Robert Daiborne, William Shakespeare, Nathaniel Field and Edward Kirkham’. A genuine note of the patent is in Sir Thomas Egerton’s note-book (_N. F._ 40). Ingleby adds that the signet office records (cf. Phillimore, 103) show that the warrant was obtained in Dec. 1609 by the influence of Monson. He was Anne’s household Chancellor and to him Rosseter and Campion dedicated their _Book of Airs_ (1601) and Campion his _Third Book of Airs_ (1617).

[178] _K. v. B._ 343.

[179] _K. v. B._ 343, 350.

[180] Evans, Mrs. Evans, Field, Underwood, Ostler, Baxstead, Rosseter, Marston, and Mrs. Hawkins were to be examined for the King’s men.

[181] _E. v. K._ 213. I presume that some of these are amongst the ‘twelve additional suits’ which Wallace, ii. 36, claims to have found.

[182] _E. v. K._ 218. In _K. v. P._ 225, he put the total annual profits during 1608–12 at £160.

[183] Halliwell-Phillipps, i. 317; cf. _Hist. Hist._ 416 (App. I), ‘Some of the chapel boys, when they grew men, became actors at the Blackfriars; such were Nathan Field and John Underwood’.

[184] The _Chamber Accounts_ record no payment to the company (cf. App. B, introd.).

[185] Cf. ch. xvi.

[186] Murray, i. 361.

[187] E. Ashmole, _Institution of the Garter_ (1672), 127; R. R. Tighe and J. E. Davis, _Annals of Windsor_, i. 426, 477; _Report of Cathedrals Commission_ (1854), App. 467; _V. H. Berks_, ii. 106; _H. M. C. Various MSS._ vii. 10.

[188] Tighe-Davis, ii. 45, from Stowe’s account ‘of the Castell of Wyndsore’ (_Harl. MS._ 367, f. 13).

[189] Nichols, i. 81, and Collier, i. 170, print a copy in _Ashm. MS._ 1113, f. 252, from the Elizabethan commission preserved at Windsor, as follows:

‘Elizabeth R.

Whereas our castle of Windsor hath of old been well furnished with singing men and children, We, willing it should not be of less reputation in our days, but rather augmented and increased, declare, that no singing men or boys be taken out of the said chapel by virtue of any commission, not even for our household chapel: and we give power to the bearer of this to take any singing men and boys from any chapel, our own household and St. Paul’s only excepted. Given at Westminster, this 8^{th} of March in the second year of our reign.’

A further copy from _Ashm. MS._ 1113 is in _Addl. MS._ 4847, f. 117. Copies or notes of the three earlier commissions are in this MS. and in _Ashm. MS._ 1124. In _Ashm. MS._ 1132, f. 169, is a letter of 18 April 1599 from the Chapter to Sir R. Cecil defending their conduct in taking a singing man from Westminster.

[190] Gee, 230, in a list of deprived clergy from N. Sanders, _De Visibili Monarchia_ (1571), 688, ‘_Magistri Musices_ ... Prestonus in oppido Vindelisoriensi’. Can this Preston be the playwright (cf. ch. xxiii)?

[191] Rimbault, 1; Stopes, _Shakespeare’s Environment_, 243.

[192] _Ashm. MS._ 1132, f. 165^a.

[193] Rimbault, 2.

[194] _M. L. R._ (1906), ii. 6.

[195] Cf. ch. xvii (Blackfriars).

[196] Cf. App. B.

[197] Rimbault, 3; _H. M. C., Hatfield MSS._ ii. 539.

[198] Rimbault, 182; _Musical Antiquary_, i. 30; _10 N. Q._ v. 341. A Christ Church, Oxford, MS., dated 1581, assigns to Farrant (cf. ch. xxiii) a possibly dramatic lament of Panthea for the death of Abradates, beginning ‘Ah, ah, alas ye salt sea Gods’. This is assigned to Robert Parsons by _Addl. MSS._ 17786–91, which assign to Farrant a song which may come from a play in which Altages is a character. The writer in the _Musical Antiquary_ thinks that a lament for Guichardo (not from either of the known Gismund texts) in the _Ch. Ch. MS._ is much in Farrant’s style.

[199] Ashmole, _Antiquities of Berks_ (ed. 1723), iii. 172; cf. p. 41.

[200] _Ashm. MS._ 1125, f. 41^v.

[201] Cf. ch. xiii (Chamberlain’s).

[202] Presumably, however, the ‘Gerry’ buried out of the Whitefriars play-house (q.v.) on 29 Sept. 1607 was of the company.

[203] Phillimore, 140; cf. App. A.

[204] _S. P. D. Jac. I_, lxxxi. 12.

[205] _M. S. C._ i. 279, from _P. R. 13 Jac. I_, pt. 20.

[206] _Variorum_, iii. 426; Collier, i. 394; Hazlitt,_ E. D. S._ 49; from _S. P. D. Jac. I_, xcvii. 140.

[207] Collier, i. 396, not, as he says, from the _P. C. Register_, but from _S. P. D. Jac. I_, xcvii. 140.

[208] Clode, ii. 269; Nicholl, _Ironmongers_, 84; cf. ch. iv.

[209] Warton, iii. 313; Stowe, _Survey_, ed. Strype, v. 231.

[210] E. J. L. Scott in _Athenaeum_ (1903), i. 220, from _S. P. D. Eliz._ xxxvi. 22; Murray, ii. 168.

[211] _Observer._ Other payments in this or another year were for ‘a haddocke occupied in the plaie’, ‘a thondre barrell’, ‘drawing the tytle of the comedee’.

[212] E. J. L. Scott in _Athenaeum_ (1896), i. 95; (1903) ii. 220; Murray, ii. 168; _Observer_.

[213] Heywood-Wright, 632; Hazlitt-Warton, iii. 308.

[214] Collins, 215 (1566), ‘M^r Scholemaster towards his charges about the playes laste Christmas, 20/-’; Maxwell-Lyte,^4 154 (1566–7) ‘To M^r Scholemaster for his charge setting furthe ij playes 19^o Martii, iii^l, xiij^s, viij^d’, (1568–9) ‘For ij dossen of links at iij^d the linke for the childrens showes at Christmass, vj^s’, (1572–3) ‘For vj poundes of candles at the playes in the Halle, ix^d’.

[215] J. W. Hales in _Englische Studien_, xviii. 408 (cf. _Mediaeval Stage_, ii. 452), made the date of 1553–4 seem plausible, but his conjecture that the play was written for the Westminster boys is disposed of by A. F. Leach, who gives Udall’s appointment to Westminster from the Chapter Act Book as 16 Dec. 1555 (_Encycl. Brit._ s.v. Udall). It might be a Court play of 1553–4, but the parody of the _Requiem_ would have been an indiscretion on Udall’s part at that date.

[216] G. C. Moore Smith (_M. L. R._ viii. 368) has an ingenious identification of him with the Wrenock of Spenser’s _Shepheards Kalendar_, xii. 41.

[217] Clode, _Hist. of Merchant Taylors Company_, i. 235, from Master’s _Accounts_. Before they opened their own school the Company had plays by the Westminster boys (q.v.).

[218] Clode, i. 234.

[219] The subject may have been Perseus and Andromeda, as the Revels prepared a picture of Andromeda this year. If so, it was probably the same play as that of 23 Feb. 1574.

[220] Whitelocke, _Liber Famelicus_ (Camden Soc.), 12.

[221] Clode, i. 264, 280, 390.

[222] _Mediaeval Stage_, ii. 186, 256.

[223] The documents in W. Campbell, _Materials for a History of the Reign of Henry VII_, are full for the period 1485–90. There is nothing of King’s players, but certain ‘stuffures’ paid for by a warrant of 25 Nov. 1485 (Campbell, i. 178) included goods delivered to John English, apparently a royal tailor or valet, ‘servant unto my said sovereign’.

[224] Collier, i. 44, from a book of Exchequer payments, beginning Michaelmas 1493, in the Chapter-house (probably _Misc. Books of the Treasury of the Receipt of the Exchequer_, 131), ‘xvij Die Maij [1494] John Englissh, Edwardo Maye, Rico Gibbeson, & John Hammond, Lusoribus Regis, alias, in lingua Anglicana, _les_ pleyars of the kyngs enterluds, de feodis suis V mrc. ꝓ Ann: le home, per lre Regis de privato Sigillo dormant de termino Michaelis alt: pte rec: denar: separatim ꝓ manus proprias, x mrc.’. The payment was continued half-yearly. Collier adds that Mr. Ouvry owned an original receipt signed by May and English for the salaries of the same four men. It is now _Egerton MS._ 2623 (3), f. 1, and appears to be a slip cut from some Exchequer record. F. Devon, _Issues of the Exchequer_, 516, gives similar payments for Michaelmas 1494 and Michaelmas 1503; it is in the latter that the names of William Rutter and John Scott appear. An Exchequer declaration of 1505–6 in _Lansd. MS._ 156, f. 135, has ‘To Richard Gibson, and other the kings plaiers, for their annuity for one yere, £13 6_s._ 8_d._’. Henry, _History of Britain_, xii. 456, gives from an Exchequer annuity list of 1507–8, ‘Ricardo Gybson et aliis lusoribus dom. reg. £13 6_s._ 8_d._’.

[225] Collier, i. 49, quotes: (a) _Account_ of Robert Fowler (1501–2), ‘Oct. 26 [1501], Itm to John Englishe for his pagent, £6 13_s._ 4_d._ ... Jan. 1 [1502] Itm, to the Kinges players, over 40^s paid by Thomas Trollop, 20^s’; (b) _Household Book of Henry VII_ (1492–1505, more correctly from _Addl. MS._ 7099 in Bentley, _Excerpta Historica_, 85), ‘Jan. 6 [1494] To the Kings Pleyers for a rewarde, £2 13_s._ 4_d._ ... Jan. 7 [1502] To John Englishe the Pleyer, 10_s._’; (c) _The Kings Boke of Payments_ (1506–9, apparently _Misc. Books of the Treasury of the Receipt of the Exchequer_, 214), ‘Jan. 7 [1509] To the kings players in rewarde, £2’. Both (b) and (c) are _Chamber Accounts_.

[226] Leland, _Collectanea_ (ed. Hearne), iv. 265.

[227] _Lansd. MS._ 171, cited by Collier, i. 72, is in fact an Elizabethan document, but a list of fees and annuities (1516) in Brewer, ii. 874 has, amongst those granted by Henry VII, ‘John Englisshe and other players £13 6_s._ 8_d._’, and amongst those recently granted, ‘John Englisshe and other players, in addition to the old annuity, £13 6_s._ 8_d._’.

[228] Collier, i. 97, 115, gives an Exchequer payment of 1525–6, ‘Rico Hole et Georgio Mayler, et aliis lusoribus Dom. Regis, de foedis suis inter se ad x marcos per ann. sibi debit: pro festo Michaelis, anno xvij Regis nunc Henrici VIII recept. denar. per manus proprias, per litt. curr. 66_s._ 8_d._’, and was informed by Mr. Devon of a similar payment of £3 6_s._ 8_d._ in 1530, in which John Roll, Richard Hole, and Thomas Sudbury are named. A household list of _c._ 1526 (Brewer, iv. 869) gives as on yearly wages ‘Ric. Hole and other players, £6 13_s._ 4_d._’. One later than March 1544 (Collier, i. 133) gives 8 players at £3 6_s._ 8_d._ each.

[229] _Chamber Accounts_ (Brewer, v. 303; xiii. 2. 524; xiv. 2. 303; xvi. 178, 698; xvii. 474; xx. 2. 515; Nicolas, xxviii; Collier, i. 79, 96, 113, 116, 117; _Trevelyan Papers_, i. 149, 157, 170, 177, 195, 203) give John English (1521–31) at half-yearly ‘fee’ or ‘wages’ of £3 6_s._ 8_d._, John Slye or Slee (1539–40) at £1 13_s._ 4_d._ half-yearly, and Richard Parrowe or Parlowe (1540–5, appointed Christmas 1538), George Birch (1538–45), Robert Hinstock (1538–45), and George Maylour (1538–40), at 16_s._ 8_d._ or 11_s._ 1_d._ quarterly.

[230] _Chamber Accounts_ (Brewer, ii. 1441; iii. 1533, &c.; Nicolas, xxviii; Collier, i. 76, 116). The reward for 1509–10 was £2 13_s._ 4_d._; during 1510–13, £3 6_s._ 8_d._; during 1513–21, £3 6_s._ 8_d._ to the ‘players’ and ‘£4’ to the ‘olde players’; and during 1529–41, £6 13_s._ 4_d._

[231] Collier, i. 69, from a ‘paper, folded up in the roll [of the _Revels Account_ for 1513–14] and in a different handwriting’, ‘Inglyshe, and the oothers of the Kynges pleyers, after pleyed an Interluyt, whiche was wryten by Mayster Midwell, but yt was so long yt was not lykyd: yt was of the fyndyng of Troth, who was caryed away by ygnoraunce and ypocresy. The foolys part was the best, but the kyng departyd before the end to hys chambre.’ According to Collier, the paper is signed by William Cornish and also contains a description of a Chapel interlude. But Brewer, who calendars the _Revels Account_ fully, does not notice it, and according to A. W. Reed in T. L. S. (3 April 1919) it cannot be traced at the R. O.

[232] Cf. ch. iii; _Tudor Revels_, 6.

[233] Brewer, ii. 1493. In 1546–7 they had 5_s._ for the loan of garments to the Revels (Kempe, 71).

[234] _Grey Friars Chronicle_ (C. S.), 34, ‘Also this same yere John Scotte, that was one of the kynges playeres, was put in Newgate for rebukynge of the shreffes, and was there a sennet, and at the last was ledde betwene two of the offecers from Newgate thorrow London and soe to Newgat agayne, and then was delyveryd home to hys howse; but he toke such a thowte that he dyde, for he went in hys shurte’.

[235] John Slye and John Yonge, mercer, had been players to Queen Jane before her death in 1537, and were concerned about 1538 in a Chancery suit about a horse hired ‘to beare there playing garmentes’ (Stopes, _Shakespeare’s Environment_, 235). Perhaps this explains the annuity of £1 10_s._ 5_d._ (1_d._ a day) which Young drew from the Chamber during 1540–2. But he obtained a patent as King’s player, with an annual fee of £3 6_s._ 8_d._, on the death of Roo in 1539 (Brewer, xiv. 1. 423), and an ‘annuity’ of £3 6_s._ 8_d._ on the death of Sudbury in 1546 (Brewer, xxi. 2. 156). Collier, i. 134, cites a description of him in a fee list amongst the _Fairfax MSS._ as ‘Maker of Interludes, Comedies, and Playes’.

[236] Cf. _Mediaeval Stage_, ii. 183.

[237] G. H. Overend in _N. S. S. Trans._ (1877–9), 425.

[238] Collier, i. 93; Madden, _Privy Purse Expenses of the Princess Mary_, 104, 140; _Rutland MSS._ iv. 270; Brewer, iv. 340.

[239] Cf. Murray, _passim_, and _Mediaeval Stage_, App. E.

[240] _Royal MS._ 7, C. xvi, f. 97 (cited Collier, i. 137). The names are in a list of servants ‘nuely in ordinary of the Chamber’, and some illegible names of players are in an accompanying list of ‘Offycers in ordynary of the Chamber of the late Kynges Majestie now discharged’.

[241] _Lord Chamberlain’s Records_, _Misc._ v. 127, f. 23 (also with the error ‘E. and P.’ in Sullivan, 249), ‘three broade yerdes of redd wollen clothe for a liuery coate of suche prices as the yeomen officers of oure howseholde are accustomed to haue and iij^s and iiij^d vnto euery of them for the Enbrauderinge of theire saide coates withe the lettres E and R on the backe and on the breste’.

[242] _Chamber Accounts_ in _Trevelyan Papers_, i. 195–205; ii. 17–31, and Collier, i. 136, 138, 148.

[243] _S. P. D. Edw. VI_, xiv.

[244] _Stowe MS._ 571, f. 27^v; _Harl. MS._ 240, f. 13.

[245] Feuillerat, _Edw. and Mary_, 89, 90, 97, 98, 119; cf. _Mediaeval Stage_, i. 406, where I think I was in error in taking John Smith as a name assumed by Will Somers.

[246] _Hist. MSS._ iii. 230, from book of annuities at Penshurst.

[247] Feuillerat, _Edw. and Mary_, 31, 39, 57, 86.

[248] Collier, i. 149. The reference to Ferrers’ ‘divine’ and ‘astronomer’ (cf. _Mediaeval Stage_, i. 407) fixes the date.

[249] _Mediaeval Stage_, ii. 201, from _Lansd. MS._ 824, f. 24.

[250] Fee-list in collection of Soc. of Antiquaries, cited by Collier, i. 161.

[251] _Chamber Accounts_ in Collier, i. 161; _Declared Accounts (Pipe Office)_, 541, m. 2^v.

[252] Reading was a London player in 1550 (App. D, No. v). The Chamber Accounts for the first few years of Elizabeth show an annuity to a George Birch under a warrant of 7 Jan. 1560.

[253] Eight players of interludes at £3 6_s._ 8_d._ each are in the fee-lists (cf. vol. i, p. 29), _Stowe MS._ 571, f. 148 (_c._ 1575–80), _Sloane MS._ 3194, f. 38 (1585), _Stowe MS._ 571, f. 168 (_c._ 1587–90), _Lansd. MS._ 171, f. 250 (_c._ 1587–91), _S. P. D. Eliz._ ccxxi, f. 16 (_c._ 1588–93), _H. O._ 256 (_c._ 1598), and with the error of £3 6_s._ in _Hargreave MS._ 215, f. 21^v (_c._ 1592–5), _Lord Chamberlain’s Records_, v. 33, f. 19^v (1593), _Stowe MS._ 572, f. 35^v (_c._ 1592–6), _Harl. MS._ 2078, f. 18^v (_c._ 1592–6). The inaccurate _Cott. MS. Titus_, B. iii, f. 176 (_c._ 1585–93) gives two ‘Plaiers on Interludes’ at £3 6_s._ The normal entry recurs in the Jacobean _Lansd. MS._ 272, f. 27 (1614) and _Stowe MS._ 575, f. 24 (1616), but a group of the early part of the reign (_Addl. MS._ 35848, f. 19; _Addl. MS._ 38008, f. 58^v; _Soc. Antiq. MSS._ 74, 75) have ‘Plaiers on the In lute’ or ‘on in Lutes’, at £3 6_s._ 8_d._ or £3 6_s._, which looks like an attempt to rationalize the _Cotton MS._ entry. And _Stowe MS._ 574, f. 16^v, has ‘Players on Lute’ at £3 6_s._ 8_d._, which some one has corrected by inserting the normal entry. All this suggests that many copyists of fee-lists in the seventeenth century confused the post of interlude player with that of a lute player, and the former was therefore probably obsolete, and its fee no longer paid to the royal players of the day (cf. ch. x). I cannot agree with E. Law, _Shakespeare a Groom, of the Chamber_, 26, 64, that the interlude players survived under James as ‘mummers, who, perhaps, sang in a sort of recitative at masques and anti-masques’.

[254] _Chamber Declared Accounts_ (_Pipe Office_), 541, _passim_, 542, m. 3; Collier, i. 236; Cunningham, xxvii. I do not know how long John Young continued to draw his Exchequer ‘annuity’, but presumably he had retired on it.

[255] Fleay, 43, says, ‘There was no specific company called the Queen’s players till 1583; it was a generic title applied to any company who prepared plays for the Queen’s amusement. In 1561 the players probably were the Earl of Leicester’s servants.’ I need hardly say that I do not accept this, which would not explain the disappearance of the ‘Queen’s’ from provincial records between 1573 and 1583. For another use of the same improvised theory by Mr. Fleay, cf. App. D, No. lxxv.

[256] Murray, i. 19, adds records from other towns, and A. Clark (10 _N. Q._ xi. 41) for Saffron Walden.

[257] App. D, No. xi.

[258] Nichols, _Eliz._ i. 280, ‘To my L. of Leyester’s men for a reward, 2_s._ 6_d._’. Fleay, 18, says that the amount is too small to favour the supposition that these were players. But Elizabeth was at Saffron Walden at the time, and a present was made to the Master of the Revels of a podd of oysters costing no more than 3_s._ 6_d._ Probably Saffron Walden was an economical place, or the payment was only for some speech.

[259] Murray, i. 41.

[260] Printed in _M. S. C._ i. 348, from _MS._ F. 10 (213) in the Marquis of Bath’s collection at Longleat; also in _3 N. Q._ xi. 350. The letter is undated but followed _Procl._ 663, on which cf. ch. viii and App. D, No. xix.

[261] _Mediaeval Stage_, i. 406; Kempe, 47. The garments provided for Ferrers by the Revels included fools’ coats for ‘Children, John Smyth, Ayer apparent ... Seame 2, Parkins 3, Elderton 4’.

[262] App. D, No. xviii.

[263] Cf. ch. ix. The patent is printed from the Patent Roll in _M. S. C._ i. 262; also from a copy of the entry on the Patent Roll preserved amongst Rymer’s papers in _Sloane MS._ 4625 by Steevens, _Shakespeare_ (1773), ii. 156, and therefrom in _Variorum_, iii. 47. This text omits the words ‘oure Citie of London and liberties of the same as also within’. Collier, i. 203, and Hazlitt, _E. D. S._ 25, printed the Signet Bill, erroneously describing it as the Privy Seal, from the State Paper Office. This has the omitted words, and Collier correctly explains the omission in Steevens’s text as due to an inaccurate copyist, pointing in proof to the words ‘in oure _said_ Citye of London’. This did not, however, prevent Fleay, 45, from asserting that in the Patent ‘an alteration had been made from the Privy Seal’, on the ground that its terms ‘infringed on the powers of the City authorities’. Such an alteration not merely did not take place, but would have been a diplomatic impossibility, as the Patent Roll was made up, not from the Letters Patent, but from the Privy Seals on which these were based.

[264] Probably they occupied the Theatre, at any rate in summer, until 1583. A letter of Gabriel Harvey’s in the summer of 1579 mentions ‘Lycesters’, the ‘Theater’, and ‘Wylson’, but in no very definite connexion with each other (cf. p. 4). The Privy Council letter of 23 Dec. 1579, for their toleration at the Blackfriars, printed by Collier, _New Facts_, 9, is a forgery (cf. ch. xvii).

[265] I should think the ‘Myngs’ of Murray, ii. 214, and Collier, _Northbrooke_, viii, more likely to be palaeographically accurate than the ‘Myngo’ of J. Latimer in _9 N. Q._ xi. 444 and his _Sixteenth Century Bristol_. But a song of ‘Monsieur Mingo’ exists in a setting by Orlando de Lassus (cf. _E. H. R._ xxxiii. 83), and is quoted in _2 Hen. IV_, v. iii. 78, and _Summer’s Last Will and Testament_, 968.

[266] Cf. App. D, No. xl.

[267] Cf. ch. xv, s.v. Baylye.

[268] Murray, i. 41, gives additional provincial records for 1576–82.

[269] Stowe, _Annales_, 717, from a description by William Segar.

[270] The show itself was perhaps of Italian origin, for on 17 June 1572 the Earl of Lincoln was entertained at Paris by the Duke of Anjou (2 Ellis, iii. 12, from _Cott. MS. Vesp._ F. vi, f. 93) with ‘an Italian comedie, which eandid, vaulting with notable supersaltes and through hoopes, and last of all the Antiques, of carying of men one uppon an other which som men call _labores Herculis_’.

[271] J. Bruce from _Harl. MS._ 287, f. 1, in _Who was Will, my Lord of Leicester’s jesting player?_ (_Sh. Soc. Papers_, i. 88). Bruce thinks that ‘Will’ might be Johnson, Kempe, or Sly, but not Shakespeare, whose ‘earliest works bear upon them the stamp of a mind far too contemplative and refined’ for Sidney to call him ‘knave’ and ‘jesting player’. I do not subscribe to the reasoning. W. J. Thoms, _Three Notelets on Shakespeare_, 120, upholds the Shakespeare theory, and attempts to support it by evidence of military knowledge in the plays.

[272] Wright, _Eliz._ ii. 268, from _Cott. MS. Galba_ C. viii; cf. _M. L. R._ iv. 88.

[273] Fleay, 82; but cf. Lee, 36, and pp. 124, 272. The thing is complicated by the influence of Malone’s suggestion (_Variorum_, ii. 166) that Shakespeare might have left Stratford with Leicester’s men on a visit to the town. This assumes its most fantastic form in the suggestion of Lee^1, 33, that Shakespeare was already in London, but ‘Shakespeare’s friends may have called the attention of the strolling players to the homeless youth, rumours of whose search for employment about the London theatres had doubtless reached Stratford’.

[274] At Exeter they are called the Lord Steward’s, certainly not the Marquis of Winchester’s, as Murray, ii. 95, suggests, for he was never Steward of Elizabeth’s household.

[275] _Norfolk Archaeology_, xiii. 11.

[276] J. M. Cowper, in _1 R. Hist. Soc. Trans._ i. 218, records a performance by ‘my Lord of Leicester’s men’ at Faversham in 1589–90; but I think this must be an error.

[277] J. D. Walker, _The Black Books of Lincoln’s Inn_, i. 374, gives the name as ‘Lord Roche’, but this is probably a mistake. Viscount Roche of Fermoy in Ireland is not likely to have had players in London.

[278] J. de Perott (_Rev. Germ._ Feb. 1914) suggests that _Portio and Demorantes_ may be the Lamorat and Porcia of the French version (1548) of _Amadis de Grecia_ (1542), viii. 56.

[279] Murray, i. 307, and A. Clark (_10 N. Q._ xii. 41) add records for 1573–83.

[280] Murray, i. 307, has additional provincial records for 1585–91.

[281] I do not agree with Fleay, _Sh._ 18, 184, that Sussex’s were satirized in _A Midsummer-Night’s Dream_; cf. _infra_, s.v. Hertford’s.

[282] Dasent, xxiv. 209.

[283] Cf. App. C, No. lvii.

[284] Dasent, viii. 71, dating the warrant on 29 Feb.

[285] _Ancaster MSS._ (_Hist. MSS._) 466.

[286] _Hist. MSS._ ix. 1. 156. The payment is given as to the Earl of ‘Waffyts’ men.

[287] Nichols, _Eliz._ i. 531.

[288] Wright and Halliwell, _Reliquiae Antiquae_, ii. 122, from _Harl. MS._ 7392, f. 97; cf. _M. L. R._ ii. 5.

[289] _Mediaeval Stage_, ii. 222.

[290] Cf. ch. viii.

[291] Ellis, i. 3, 32; Cooper, ii. 379; from _S. P. D. Eliz._ cxxxix. 26. The Privy Council letter of 30 Oct. 1575 (_M. S. C._ i. 195) forbids ‘open shewes’ and ‘assemblies in open places of multitudes of people’ within five miles of Cambridge.

[292] Murray, i. 348. I add Maldon (1581).

[293] Murray, i. 348. I add Stratford (1583–4). Dr. Boas kindly informs me that the Oxford City Accounts for 1584–5 have a payment to Oxford’s ‘musytions’.

[294] Cf. ch. xii (Chapel).

[295] The payment was made to Richard Woderam, but he is more likely to have been an agent of the Corporation than a member of the company.

[296] _Mediaeval Stage_, ii. 186, 256. The 1469 entry has been since published by A. Clark in _10 N. Q._ vii. 181, ‘Et solut. lusoribus domini comitis Essex ludentibus coram burgensibus infra burgum hoc anno, v_s_.’

[297] _Variorum_, ii. 150. The ‘lord Cartleyes players’ recorded by B. S. Penley, _The Bath Stage_, 12, in 1580–1, 1582–3, and 1583–4 were perhaps Lord Berkeley’s. Murray, ii. 27, adds other provincial notices.

[298] This did not prevent Chalmers from giving the date 1581 and being set right by Malone (_Variorum_, iii. 442). Collier, i. 247, gives 1583, but misdates Tilney’s commission of 1581, and takes it for the instrument constituting the company.

[299] Feuillerat, _Eliz._ 359.

[300] Nicolas, _Hatton_, 271.

[301] Stowe, _Annales_ (1615), 697, (1631), 698.

[302] Greg, _Henslowe_, ii. 79, citing _Addl. MS._ 5750, f. 113.

[303] Cf. ch. x.

[304] Halliwell, _Affray at Norwich in 1583 in which Queen Elizabeth’s Players were involved_ (1864), and in _Illustrations of the Life of Shakespeare_, 118.

[305] Murray, i. 20, and A. Clark in _10 N. Q._ xii. 41 (Saffron Walden) give other provincial records throughout. An Ipswich one for 1581–2 must be misplaced.

[306] Cf. App. D, No. lxxv.

[307] Fleay, 83.

[308] _Variorum_, ii. 166.

[309] _M. S. C._ i. 354. from _P. R. O. Lay Subsidies, Household_, 69/97.

[310] Fleay, 34.

[311] The illustration of Mr. Fleay’s methods of constructing stage history is delightful. In _The True Tragedie of Richard the Third_, a Queen’s play, the murderers of the princes in the Tower are Will Slawter or Sluter, ‘yet the most part calles him blacke Will’ (Hazlitt, _Sh. L._ v. 95), and Jack Denten or Douton. On this Mr. Fleay (ii. 316) comments, ‘One of the actors in it, Sc. 11, is called Will Slaughter, “yet the most part calls him Black Will”, _i.e._ the Black Will of _Arden of Faversham_, q.v., which had no doubt been acted by the same man. Another actor is called Jack Donton (Dutton) or Denten, an accommodation of the Dighton of history to the actor’s real name.’ Obviously there is no need to suppose that the characters in _The True Tragedie_ bore the names of their actors. John Dutton is not very likely to have taken a part of four speeches, and Will Slawter is evidently added to the John Dighton of Holinshed, to give Edward V the ‘irony’ of a pun upon ‘slaughter’. As for _Arden of Faversham_, it is not known to have been a Queen’s play at all, and its ‘Black Will’ is taken from Holinshed. Having gone so far, I do not know why Mr. Fleay stopped short of identifying Black Will’s colleague ‘Shakebag’ with the name of an actor. Of course, Mr. Fleay’s blundering conjectures must be distinguished from the deliberate fabrications of Collier, who published in his _New Facts_, 11, from a forged document amongst the _Bridgewater MSS._, a certificate to the Privy Council under the date ‘Nov. 1589’, from ‘her Ma^{ts} poore playeres James Burbidge Richard Burbidge John Laneham Thomas Greene Robert Wilson John Taylor Anth. Wadeson Thomas Pope George Peele Augustine Phillippes Nicholas Towley William Shakespeare William Kempe William Johnson Baptiste Goodale and Robert Armyn being all of them sharers in the blacke Fryers playehouse’. On this cf. ch. xvii, and Ingleby, 249.

[312] Tarlton, 12, 13, 27, 29, 30, 31, 33, 37, ‘while the queenes players lay in Worcester’, ‘when the queenes players were restrained in summer, they travelled downe to S. James his fair at Bristow’, ‘in the country where the queenes plaiers were accepted into a gentlemans house’, ‘at Salisbury, Tarlton and his fellowes were to play before the maior and his brethren’, ‘the queenes players travelling into the west country to play, and lodging in a little village some ten miles from Bristow’.

[313] Tarlton, 16, ‘one in mockage threw him in this theame, he playing then at the Curtaine’.

[314] Tarlton, 24, ‘Tarlton then, with his fellowes, playing at the Bel by ... the Crosse-keyes in Gracious streete’.

[315] Tarlton, 13, ‘at the Bull in Bishops-gate-street, where the queenes players oftentimes played’. It was here (Tarlton, 24) that Tarlton and Knell played _The Famous Victories of Henry the Fifth_.

[316] Nashe, _Pierce Penilesse_ (_Works_, i. 197; cf. i. 308).

[317] Arber, ii. 526, ‘A sorowfull newe sonnette intituled Tarltons Recantacon uppon this theame gyven him by a gentleman at the Bel savage without Ludgate (nowe or ells never) beinge the laste theame he songe’. The tract is not extant.

[318] App. C, No. lvii. He names Knell, Bentley, Mills, Wilson, and Laneham.

[319] Cf. ch. xv, s.v. Alleyn, and ch. xviii.

[320] E. J. L. Scott in _Athenaeum_ for 21 Jan. 1882.

[321] Cf. ch. xviii.

[322] Murray, ii. 398 (Southampton), ‘the Queenes maiesties & the Earle of Sussex players, xxx^s’; 240 (Coventry), ‘the Quenes players & the Erle of Sussex players, xv^s’; 284 (Gloucester), ‘the Queenes and the Earle of Sussex players, xxx^s’. At Faversham (Murray, ii. 274) separate payments of 1590–1 for the Queen’s (20_s._) and Essex’s (10_s._) are followed by ‘to the Queen’s Players and to the Earl of Essex’s Players’ (20_s._). It is conceivable that in this last entry ‘Essex’s’ may be a slip for ‘Sussex’s’.

[323] App. D, No. lxxxv.

[324] Nashe, _Works_, iii. 244.

[325] _M. S. C._ i. 190, from _Lansd. MSS._ 71, 75. The letters are both dated 18 Sept. 1592, and that to Burghley contained copies of the charters of Henry III and Elizabeth, of a Privy Council letter of 30 Oct. 1575 (cf. Dasent, ix. 39) forbidding shows within five miles of the University, and of the warrant of the Vice-Chancellor and other justices to the constables of Chesterton, dated 1 Sept. 1592.

[326] University Letter of 17 July 1593 in _M. S. C._ i. 200, from _Lansd. MS._ 75; Privy Council Act of 29 July 1593 in Dasent, xxiv. 427.

[327] _M. S. C._ i. 198, from _Lansd. MS._ 71.

[328] Henslowe, i. 4. The date in the diary is ‘8 of Maye 1593’, but I am prepared to accept Dr. Greg’s view (ii. 80) that as Francis was pawnbroking for his uncle all through 1593, this must be an error of Henslowe’s for ‘1594’. He seems to have actually left London on 18 May 1594.

[329] Henslowe, i. 6.

[330] W. H. Stevenson, _Nottingham Records_, iv. 244.

[331] _Mediaeval Stage_, ii. 186, 251.

[332] _Sh. Homage_, 154.

[333] Fleay, _Shakespeare_, 184.

[334] Collier, i. 259.

[335] Murray, i. 294. I add Maldon (1564–5). There is no proof that ‘Beeston and his fellowes’ at Barnstaple in 1560–1 were Strange’s.

[336] The Revels account for 1587–9 (Feuillerat, _Eliz._ 390) includes ‘a paire of fflanell hose for Symmons the Tumbler’, which is not in the separate account for 1587–8 (Feuillerat, _Eliz._ 380).

[337] App. D, No. lxxxii. The forged list of Queen’s men (q.v.) in 1589 is sometimes, by a further error, whose I do not know, assigned to Strange’s.

[338] I had better give the complicated and in some cases uncertain notices in full; the unspecified references are to Murray: Cambridge (1591–2), ‘my Lord Stranges plaiers’ (Cooper, ii. 518), and so also (ii. 229, 284) Canterbury (13 July 1592) and Gloucester (1591–2); Bath (1591–10 June 1592), ‘my Lord Admiralls players’ ... ‘my L. Stranges plaiers’ (ii. 202); Aldeburgh (1591–2), ‘my Lord Admirals players’ (Stopes, _Hunnis_, 314); Shrewsbury (30 Sept. 1591–29 Sept. 1592), ‘my L. Admeralls players’ ... ‘my l. Stranges and my l. Admyralls players’ (ii. 392, s. a. 1592–3, but the entries for the two years seem to be transposed; _vide infra_); Coventry (10 Dec. 1591–29 Nov. 1592), ‘the Lord Strange players’ (ii. 240); Leicester (19 Dec. 1592), ‘the Lorde Admiralls Playars’ (ii. 305); Shrewsbury (30 Sept. 1592–29 Sept. 1593), ‘The iii of Feb: 1592. Bestowed vppon the players of my Lorde Admyrall’ ... ‘my L. Darbyes men being players’ (ii. 392, s. a. 1591–2, but the detailed date and the name Derby make an error palpable); Bath (11 June 1592–10 Sept. 1593), ‘my L. Stranges plaiers’ (ii. 203); Coventry (30 Nov. 1592–26 Nov. 1593), ‘the Lo Admiralls players’ (ii. 240); York (April 1593), ‘the Lord Admerall & Lord Mordens players’ (ii. 412); Newcastle (May 1593), ‘my Lord Admiralls plaiers, and my Lord Morleis plaiers being all in one companye’ (G. B. Richardson, _Extracts from Municipal Accounts of N._); Southampton (1592–3), ‘my L. Morleys players and the Earle of Darbyes’ (ii. 398, ‘_c._ 18 May’, but Strange became Derby on 25 Sept.); Leicester (Oct.–Dec. 1593), ‘the Erle of Darbyes playors’ (ii. 306); Coventry (2 Dec. 1593), ‘the Lo: of Darbyes players’ (ii. 240); Bath (11 Sept. 1593–1594), ‘the L. Admiralls, the L. Norris players’ (ii. 203); Ipswich (7 March 1594), ‘vnto therlle of Darbys players and to the Lorde Admirals players, the ij amongste’ (ii. 293, s. a. 1591–2, but on 7 March 1592 Strange was not yet Derby, and his men were playing for Henslowe).

[339] App. D, No. xcii.

[340] Henslowe, i. 13. The account is headed, ‘Jn the name of god Amen 1591 beginge the 19 of febreary my lord stranges mene a ffoloweth 1591’.

[341] Cf. ch. xxiv, s.v. _1 Jeronimo_. Some marginal notes of sums of money are not clearly intelligible, but may represent sums advanced by Henslowe for the company.

[342] Henslowe, i. 15.