‘How Chances it they Travel?’ Provincial Touring, Playing Places, and the King’s Men

Summary

Hamlet’s question provides our earliest surviving evidence of curiosity about actors’ provincial touring – his interest is aroused because, as he realizes, ‘their [the actors’] residence both in reputation and profit was better both ways’ (2.2.331–2). Rosencrantz replies, puzzingly, with two explanations, alluding to ‘the late innovation’ and the ‘eyrie of children’ as the reasons why the tragedians of the city have taken to the road. The moment in the play passes, but curiosity about provincial touring does not; attempts to answer Hamlet’s query have recurred throughout the three hundred and ninety-odd years since he asked it. This essay tackles an old question, then, in the hope that some new light may be shed on it. As well as asking why players toured, we will try to discover when tours took place (a question closely related to the first) and how they were organized. I am curious, as well, about the physical conditions and economics of touring along with the related issue of the type of reception the touring players might expect. Finally, we will enquire into where players toured – their touring routes – and most importantly, about the playing places in which they acted during their sojourns in provincial cities and towns through the length and breadth of England, Scotland and Ireland.