No CrossRef data available.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Of the several agencies whose joint functioning made possible the Elizaibethan theatre, the most neglected, the least understood, and yet in some respects the most important, is the dramatic company. The history and organization of the playhouses have long since attracted the attention of scholars, and the individual fortune of the playwrights and actors has been studied from many points of view. Research on the dramatic companies, on the other hand, has taken but one direction. Fleay, Maas, and Murray have gone far to establish the chronology of the companies, but their real place in the history of the Elizabethan theatre has not been established. General works on the Elizabethan drama and theatre have failed to give them the attention they deserve, and the general student of the period hardly realizes that upon the companies rested a considerable share of the financial responsibility for the drama and the entire burden of producing it. Nor is it difficult to understand why the dramatic companies have been neglected. Writers upon our period have been content to treat of Elizabethan actors in a manner fitting those of all succeeding periods. The function of the modern actor is to act. The theatrical capitalist and the specialized skill of the producer relieve him of all the financial, and a substantial part of the artistic, responsibility which rested upon Elizabethan actors. If, however, the Elizabethan actor had greater responsibilities, he had also greater opportunities. The Elizabethan drama owes far more than has yet been realized to the fact that many of the playwrights and all of the producing managers were great actors, who knew the audience intimately enough to gauge its capacities, who acknowledged no paymaster or employer but that audience, and whose instincts partook alike of the shrewdness of the successful business man and the daring of the artist. This producing and managerial function of the companies justifies a closer investigation than has yet been made of their place in the theatrical activities of the time and of the business organization which enabled them to hold it.
1 Fleay, Stage, and Drama; Maas, Die Äussere Geschichte der Englischen Theatertruppen; Murray, English Dramatic Companies.
2 Halliwell-Phillipps, Outlines, 7th ed., I, p. 313.
3 Wallace, Englische Studien, xliii, p. 342.
4 I have discussed fully the theatrical budget of Shakspere's times in Chapter vi of my ms. dissertation, Finance and Business Management of the Elizabethan Theatre, Harvard University, 1918.
5 See below, note 11.
6 Henslowe Papers, ed. Greg, pp. 23-24.
7 Ibid., p. 56, Samuel Rowley to Henslowe, in 1601: “Mr. hinchloe I haue harde fyue shetes of a playe of the Conqueste of the Indes & I dow not doute but It wyll be a verye good playe tharefore I praye ye delyuer them fortye shyllynges… .”
Ibid., p. 84, Field to Henslowe, 1613 : “Mr. Dawborne and I have spent a great deale of time in conference about this plott, wch. will make as beneficiall a play as hath Come these seauen yeares.” He then proceeds to ask for a loan. See also, ibid., p. 49. The plays as well as the apparel remained company property, though Henslowe from time to time seized this property to secure unpaid debts (ibid., p. 49). Greg (Hens. Diar., ii, pp. 120-1) has shown conclusively that Henslowe did not act as a play-broker or agent, but in his loans simply acted, according to Rendle's phrase, as “Banker of the Bankside.”
8 In New Shakespeareana, I, p. 36, appears an unsigned article which charges that “in Shakspere's day one Philip Henslowe devised the same sort of thing” as that more recently perpetrated by “the handful of ‘commercial gents ‘” who pooled their interests and, “suggesting that the public be …” prevented Mrs. Fiske from finding suitable bookings for her productions outside of New York. Then follows a series of curious indictments. The sins with which Henslowe is charged might at worst be considered as ill deeds done by the companies and recorded by him only because he loaned them money to carry out their fell purposes. As a matter of fact, however, they have to do with transactions in no sense reprehensible even from the point of view of an opponent of monopolies, Elizabethan or modern. Among the charges against Henslowe are the following:
1. “ He bribed a printer in 1599 not to print Dekker's Patient Grissell,” that is to say, the company, in self-protection took steps to prevent its property from becoming public and valueless.
2. “He employed a hack … to rewrite and re-arrange so as to disguise other people's plays,”—and, more particularly, “to write plays competing with those already produced or about to be produced by Shakspere's Company.” In other words, Henslowe's companies employed hack playwrights (such as Ben Jonson) to rewrite earlier plays—exactly as the Chamberlain's Men employed Shakspere in the earlier stages of his career.
3. “ By loans and advances … he managed to get poor Ben Jonson into his power, and thereafter as long as Shakspere lived kept Ben at Shakspere's heels endeavoring to duplicate Shakspere's attractions… . Philip Henslowe was the thorn in Shakspere's flesh… .” All of which is so delightfully false from start to finish (and so long after Gifford!) as to require no further comment. It is worth noting, however, if only for the reason that other and more scholarly writers than the one just quoted continue to speak of Elizabethan “theatre trusts” in a manner that entirely confuses the issue. This in spite of the fact that Mr. Greg's masterly examination of Henslowe's activities should have undeceived them in this respect. (Cf., for example, Sullivan's Court Masques of James I, New York, 1913, p. 182. Here Shakspere is spoken of as “a member of one of the biggest theatre trusts in London.”) The one real charge to be brought against Henslowe is that he interfered with the prerogatives of his companies at times by attaching actors to him personally (see Hens. Papers, p. 124) and by threatening to “break” a company by dismissing such personal employees of his. The wages of these employees, however, were also paid by the companies. Moreover, the indications are that these threats of Henslowe's came rarely and then only in self-defense, since certain actors and at times entire companies made every effort to “break” their housekeepers by leaving them suddenly. See Wallace, Eng. Studien, xliii, p. 342; Hensl. Diary, i, p. 179; Cunningham, Shaks. Soc. Papers, iv, pp. 95-100; Murray, op. cit., i, p. 53; Hensl. Papers, p. 49.
9 For a full discussion of company competition compare chapter ii of my dissertation, and my article on “The Travelling Players in Shakspere's England,” Modern Philology, January, 1920. See also note 91, below.
10 See the 1635 Globe and Blackfriars Sharepapers, the Henslowe-Cholmley contract (Hensl. Papers, pp. 2-4) and, for general discussion, the references given in the preceding note.
11 Halliwell-Phillipps, op. cit., I, p. 314. See my article on “Shakpere's Income,” Studies in Philology, xv, pp. 83 ff.
12 See the dedication of Dekker's If It Be Not Good.
13 See note 9, and Hensl. Diary, I, pp. 4-6.
14 Loc. cit., ii, p. 113.
15 See note 3, and Shaksp. Soc. Papers, iv, p. 98.
16 Fleay, Stage, pp. 273 ff.
17 Thus Henslowe on May 4, 1601, received from the Admiral's Men “in pt. of a more some” 28 li. 10 s. “cort mony for playnge ther at cryssmas” (H. D., i, p. 40).
18 Wallace, “Three Lond. Theatres,” Neb. Univ. Stud., 1909, pp. 35 ff.
19 One of the witnesses testifies that “one-half of the profit that came of the galleries” was set aside for this purpose, “hut what it might amount to this deponent cannot judge.”
20 The company complains of Beeston's “unconscionable and extreame Dealeinges,” and charges that he “hath with the said moneyes much enritched himself … and … did at one time yeald … a false accompte of fower hundred poundes.” Later, they say, he “separated & Devided himself” from them, and carried off all their “furniture & apparel” (Wallace, p. 38). Their charges are supported by strong evidence. The company asked the court to hold Beeston responsible for Smith's bill. The decision is not extant but it seems certain that Beeston was at fault. He was involved also in the Baskerville suit, and he appears in Henslowe's Diary as a seller of stage apparel—under suspicious circumstances (H. D., I, p. 180). His questionable methods apparently did not interfere with his success as an actor and business manager. He became manager of “the King and Queen's Young Company” at the Cockpit in 1637. See below, note 82.
21 See Malone, Shakspeare, iii, ed. Boswell, pp. 474 ff.
22 See Wallace, “Witter vs. Hemings and Condell,” Neb. Univ. Stud., 1910.
23 In 1618 Hemings paid to Sir George Buc, then Master of the Revels, “in the name of the four companys for a lenten dispensation in the holydaies, 44 s.” (Malone, iii, p. 224).
24 This and the following entry from Sir Henry Herbert's Office Book appear in Malone, iii, pp. 229 ff.
25 In 1627.
26 See Malone, iii, pp. 229, 233 ff.
27 Cunningham, Revels Accounts, pp. xxxix ff. These matters are discussed in my paper on “The Players at Court, 1564-1642,” to be published very shortly in The Journal of Engl. and Germ. Phil. Hemings was active also in disposing of his company's surplus apparel and properties (see note 42).
28 Malone, iii, pp. 202, 472.
29 He repeatedly appears as co-defendant with Hemings in suits against the company (see note 22) and on other occasions. See notes 50 and 53, below.
30 For a contrary opinion see Professor Thorndike's Shakespeare's Theater, pp. 309, 258, and compare my note on the evidence against his view, Studies in Philology, xv, p. 86, note 14.
31 The manifold demands upon Hemings as actor and business manager apparently did not exhaust all his time and interest. In his will he describes himself as “John Heminge, citizen and grocer of London,” but, as Malone says (op. cit., iii, p. 191) “how he obtained his freedom of the grocers' company does not appear.” Witter, who had good reason to dislike Hemings and Condell, describes them as men “of great lyveinge, wealth, and power” (see note 22). The estimate of Hemings given above takes into account the charges made against him by his daughter in the Osteler suit. The papers found by Professor Wallace (see London Times, October 2 and 4, 1909) unfortunately state only one side of that case, and the unsupported charges of Mrs. Osteler—a young woman of somewhat questionable character—deserve no particular weight.
32 See note 6.
33 Cunningham, p. xliv.
34 Ibid., p. xxxiii, and Chambers, Modn. Lang. Review, Jan., 1909, p. 166.
35 For which see Hens. Papers, pp. 123-125.
36 In connection with the 10 s. fine see T. Gainsford's Rich Cabinet Furnished With a Variety of Excellent Descriptions: “Drunkenness puts a Carpenter by his rule, a Fencer from his ward, and a Player out of his part” (Hazlitt, Drama and Stage, p. 11).
37 Some of the actor-sharers in Henslowe's companies appear to have pawned company apparel for their personal benefit on more than one occasion. On October 4, 1598, Henslowe loaned 3 li. to Shaw, Jones, and Downton of the Admiral's Men, to enable them to fetch “home the Rich clocke [cloak] from pane,” the charge being against them personally and not against the company: “wch. the stocke is not to paye but these meane.” (H. D., i, p. 62). An entry of November 2, 1597, indicates that Downton had been engaged at that time in a similar transaction involving the loan of 12 li. 10 s. to redeem two cloaks (ibid., i, p. 69). In August and October, 1602, Christopher Beeston, then late of Shakspere's Company, which he had left with Kemp to join the Admiral's Men (Murray, op. cit., i, p. 53) sold several items of stage apparel to his new companions. His sharp practice on other occasions' (see note 20, above) throws some doubt upon the legitimacy of these transactions. Further sales of costumes and properties by actor-sharers are noted in the Diary (i, pp. 164, 185) and the Henslowe Papers, p. 126. In this connection, cf. note 48, below. The disciplinary provisions of this contract are mentioned by Percy Simpson, in Shakespeare's England, ii, p. 264.
38 It should be noted that the two parties to this contract were Dawes and Henslowe, instead of Dawes and the Lady Elizabeth's Men directly. Henslowe at this time was undoubtedly looking about for ways and means to attach the Lady Elizabeth's Men firmly to his new house, the Hope. The company, on the other hand, was new, financially dependent upon Henslowe, and in no position to protest. Dawes, moreover, was an actor of reputation, and they were probably glad to get him, even though Henslowe was usurping their functions in making the contract in his own name. Prom the fact that the contract in every case makes the actor-sharers the sole judge of any infraction of the rules, we may conclude that it embodies a set of rules such as had come to Henslowe's knowledge through his association with the earlier companies at the Rose, Bear Garden, and Fortune.
39 Thus Kemp left Shakspere's company for Worcester's Men in 1599. See Murray, op. cit., i, p. 53; H. D., i, p. 179.
40 See Studies in Philology, xv, p. 86.
41 Robert Dawes was one of them.
42 See C. W. Wallace, Globe Theatre Apparel, privately printed, London, 1909, and Mrs. Stopes, Shakesp. Jahrbuch, xlvi, p. 94.
43 See Hens. Papers, p. 64.
44 Not to be confused with the annual income of company shares', which will be discussed below.
45 A provincial company until 1602 (Murray, i, p. 52).
46 Warner, Cat. MSS. Dulwich Coll., p. 2; Murray, ii, p. 121.
47 See the Greenstreet Papers, in Fleay, Stage, p. 280.
48 H. D., i, p. 82, ii, p. 309. It is possible that Shaw and Jones got a part of their allowance in goods, for Shaw sold to Worcester's Men a few months later four cloaks of the value of 16 li. (H. D., i, p. 164. See above, note 37). In May and July, 1598, Martin Slater, who had left the Admiral's Men in the preceding year, collected 8 li. from the company, probably in settlement of a debt representing part of the value of his share in the stock, for which he had threatened to sue (H. D., i, pp. 54, 73, 28; ii, p. 311).
49 In view of Massye's figures in 1613. In a list of his resources noted on the back of a letter sent to him by the man from whom he purchased Dulwich Manor, Alleyn noted among others “my share of apparel,” 100 li. (Warner, op. cit., p. xxiii, supplies the date). I believe this must refer to Alleyn's share in the stock of the Admiral's Men, though Murray thinks that Alleyn's connection with the company ceased in 1604, when he and Juby were paid for a court performance of the company (see Murray, ii, pp. 136-7). The fact that no further appearance of Alleyn's is actually recorded does not necessarily mean that he dropped out of the company in 1604, and I know of no other organization in which Alleyn could have had a “share of apparel” in 1605.
50 For the will, see Malone, iii, p. 482. Malone and Chalmers have nothing to say concerning this item.
51 The phrase “my master Hemings,” taken together with similar expressions elsewhere (cf. notes 56-62, below) indicates that Cook had been Hemings's acting apprentice, and he must have been a young man at the time of his death. He would hardly have been admitted to a full share so early in his career (cf. note 64, below). Chalmers states that Cook “represented the lighter females of Shakespeare's dramas” (Malone, iii, p. 481). Augustine Phillipps in his will left 5 li. each to his executors, Hemings, Richard Burbage, and Thomas Slye; “thirty shillings in gold” to his “fellowes,” Shakspere, Condell, and Beeston; and twenty shillings each to Cook, Tooley, and Cowley (Malone, iii, p. 472).
52 The evidence here collected indicates that Greene in his Groats-worth of Wit (1596) exaggerated the value of company stock. Greene gives an account of his meeting with a player who had the appearance of “a gentleman of great living” and the bearing of “a substantial man.” In the course of the ensuing conversation between the two, the player remarks that his “very share in playing apparel would not be sold for two hundred pounds” (Grosart's Greene, xii, p. 131). Greene's poverty doubtless led him to exaggerate the prosperity of the actors. Lee (Life, p. 298) accepts the statement at its face value. According to the statement of the Lady Elizabeth's Men in 1615 their total stock was sold that year for only 400 li. (Hens. Papers, p. 89).
53 Condell was executor of Underwood's will, and in turn made Hemings his trustee. Augustine Phillipps appointed Hemings, Burbage, and Slye his overseers. Condell and Richard Burbage served as executors of the estate of Tooley (Malone, iii, p. 470; Collier's Actors, pp. 146, 243).
54 H. D., I, p. 148, Sept. 21, 1601: “Layd owt for the company … for ower metynge at the Tavern when we did eatte ower vensone the some of” 3 li. 12 s. 9 d.,—a good round sum for those days!
Ibid., i, p. 83, Jan. 8, 1597: “Lent vnto the company when they fyrst played dido at nyght,”—30 s.
Ibid., i, p. 85, March 20, 1598: “Lent … vnto the company for to spend at the Readynge of that boocke [Chettle, Dekker, and Drayton's Famous Wars of Henry I] at the sonne in new fyshstreat” —5 s.
Ibid., I, p. 85, March 25, 1598: “Layd owt at the same tyme [when the company was reading Chettle, Dekker, Wilson, and Drayton's Earl Godwin] at the tavarne in fyshstreate for good cheare ”—5 s.
Ibid., I, p. 179, August 21, 1602: “Layd owt for the company at the mermayd when we weare at owre a grement … the some of” 9 s.
Ibid., i, p. 166, May 16, 1602: “Layd owt for the companye when they Read the playe of Jeffa for wine at the tavern ”—2 s.
On two occasions in 1594 Henslowe also lent the company another 16 s. 8 d. “for drinckinge” and “for drinckinge with the Jentellemen.” Ibid., I, p. 198.
55 The Admiral's Men and the playwrights of Shakspere's company were not the only members of the profession who occasionally looked upon the wine when it was red. “Drink must clap up the bargain” say Sir Oliver Owlet's Men in Histrio-Mastix, upon concluding a bit of professional business, and the poet Posthaste interrupts one of his effusions in characteristic fashion:
56 See notes 50-51.
57 Malone, iii, p. 472.
58 Ibid., iii, p. 485.
59 H. D., I, p. 204; ii, 101.
60 H. D., I, p. 204; ii, pp. 284-5; Murray, I, pp. 185-6.
61 See chapter vi of my dissertation.
62 Captain Tucca in Jonson's Poetaster knew all about the hopes and aspirations of young hirelings. His boys, the Pyrgi, do several bits of successful play-acting to help the Captain to certain much-needed loans, and their grateful master gives them the proper encouragement. “Sir, thou shalt have a quarter share, be resolute,” he says in Act iii, Scene i. As the Captain grows more enthusiastic the boys fare better still. “Boy, you can have but half a share now,” he remarks in Act I, Scene i, the implication being that it will not be long before the lad will be ready for a whole share. A little later in the same scene he addresses the lads as “fellow-sharers.” See also Dekker, in The Wonderful Yeare, Grosart, i, p. 201 : “The worst players Boy stood upon his good parts, swearing tragical … oathes that how vilainously soeuer he randed he would … be halfe a sharer (at least) at home or else strowle … with some notorious wicked floundring company abroad.”
63 Fleay (Stage, p. 143) states that “the prefix ‘Mr.‘ [in the lists of actors given in royal licenses or treasury warrants for court performances] indicates a sharer.” It is certainly unlikely that mere hirelings would have been named in such documents. On the other hand both Fleay (p. 189) and Greg (H. D., ii, p. 103) point out that the title prefixed to a name in the list of chief actors in the play-books does not necessarily indicate a sharer. Royal licenses and patents, therefore, offer the most reliable indication as to the number of actor-sharers in the companies, though the lists in these documents are often incomplete. The lists of signatures accompanying acknowledgments of indebtedness on the part of Henslowe's companies, settle the question for these organizations. The number of sharers ranges between five (Leicester's Men, in 1574) and fourteen (the Palsgrave's Men, 1611; Malone Soc. Coll., I, p. 262 ff.). The King's Men had thirteen sharers in 1625, but apparently only nine in 1635 (Halliwell-P., I, p. 313). The patent of Prince Henry's Men in 1606 names eight sharers; in 1609 they had at least nine (Malone Soc. Coll., i, p. 268). The Admiral's Men in 1597 had ten sharers, and the same number of sharers represented the Queen's Men at the coronation procession of James I in 1603 (Murray, I, p. 186). This number is the one which recurs most frequently, and it may be taken as a fair average. The complement of apprentices, hirelings, and attendants attached to most of the companies was generally about equal in number to the sharers. See Chapter vi of my dissertation, and, for the number of actors in the travelling companies, Modern Philology, January, 1920.
64 Hamlet, iii, ii, 291:
65 Simpson, Shakespeare's England, ii, p. 244, takes too literally Dekker's allusion in Lanthorne and Candlelight (Grosart, iii, p. 241) to “an undeserving plaier for halfe a share.” I cannot see that this implies that half-sharers were generally poor actors. A more reasonable interpretation would be that Dekker was thinking of a half-sharer who was not worthy of his place. That the half-sharers were ambitious to become whole sharers is only natural. The Hamlet passage referred to above is paralleled by one in the fourth act of Histrio-Mastix :
66 “The threequarters sharers advauncinge them selves to whole shares……” Henslowe Papers, p. 88. Collier, Annals, ed. 1831, ii, p. 429, cites The Owl and the Nightingale (1604): “The Ant began to stalk like a three-quarter sharer.”
67 See Histrio-Mastix, Act v, line 80 : “You that are master-sharers must provide you upon your own purses” (Collier).
68 See above, note 42.
69 It should be remembered that these men profited heavily as housekeepers. See note 72, below.
70 Greene's Tu Quoque was named for him.
71 Fleay, Stage, p. 280.
72 It must be admitted that Dekker, in the Lanthorne and Candlelight passage referred to in note 65, speaks also of “a whole sharer and a halfe.” While it is not impossible that Dekker may be referring here to company shares only, and that some few actors may actually have held more than a whole share in their company, it should be said that the present passage, and possibly one other, are the only ones which admit of such an interpretation,—that is, if one chooses to ignore the better evidence of the Baskerville case and the agreement of the Duke of York's Men. Before disposing of the Dekker passage, I may say a word concerning the other. It is a very puzzling remark made in the course of a letter dated 1592 and written by the actor Richard Jones to Edward Alleyn. Jones asks for a loan to enable him to get his clothes out of pawn for an acting trip “beyond the seas wt. mr. browne and the company but not by his meanes for he is put to half a shaer and to stay hear, for they ar all against his goinge” (Hens. Papers, p. 33, n. 4). Greg as well as Cohn (Shakespeare in Germany, p. xxxii) confess their inability to make anything out of this statement, and I am convinced that Murray (i, pp. 50-51) explains it incorrectly. He says the words “probably mean that those of the company who did not intend going abroad objected to Robert Browne, in all likelihood their head player, leaving them, and reduced his part in their profits to half a share so that he might not have the means to fit out a company for abroad.” There is no evidence whatsoever to show that any company had the right to confiscate the. property of its members by reducing their earnings from a whole share to a half share; moreover, a company seeking to keep one of its members from leaving it, would hardly cut down his income as an inducement for him to stay. It is just possible that the passage may be read as follows : “for he is put to (half a shaer) and to stay hear,”—'that is, given an additional half share to induce him to stay. The passage is too obscure, however, to count as evidence against the view that no actor held more than a full share in the company.—As regards Dekker's “whole sharer and a half,” such a person might well have been an actor who held a whole share in his company and a half share in the theatre in which he acted. This was about the situation of Swanston, one of the claimants in the 1635 Share Papers, who was a whole sharer in his company, and held a one-third share in the Blackfriars (Halliwell-P., I, p. 314). Simpson (Shakesp. England, ii, p. 244) regards a whole share as “the market scale of wages.” I must again refer to the case of Greene and the Duke of York's Men in support of my view that a whole share went only to the leading actors. Simpson calls attention to the fact that Dawes, in the contract discussed above (see note 35) bound himself to play “at the rate of one whole share according to the custome of players.” But Dawes, as we have seen, was an actor of some prominence; a whole share for him would therefore have been quite in accord with “the custom of players.”—In this connection it is necessary to refer once more to the multiplicity of “shares” enjoyed by certain actor-sharers who were also housekeepers. (See note 40.) Much confusion has resulted from the fact that Elizabthan documents—like many writers on Elizabethan topics—fail to distinguish between the two kinds of sharers. Of course one could hardly expect the documents to do so. Thus Theodor Elze was misled by certain allusions to Richard Burbage in John Gee's anti-Jesuit tract called New Shreds of the Old Snare (London, 1624, p. 21) : “Who can tell how many sharers there are that must take part of that which is paid? Wherein I hope that these two Jesuits …. have a treble or quatruple share each of them, as being the principall overruling Masters. Would any man thinke that Burbage should be content with a single share, who was the flower and life of his company, the Loadstone of the Auditory and the Roscius of the Stage ?” (see Shakesp. Jahrbuch, xii, p. 315). On the basis of this remark, which probably alludes to Burbage's proprietary holdings rather than to his company share, Elze proceeds to assign to Burbage two shares in the company, one to Shakspere, and one-half each to Hemings, Condell, Phillips, and Kemp—a conjecture which is far from representing the facts.
73 Shakesperean Playhouses, p. 199.
74 Op. cit., p. 253. “Wir dürfen annehmen,” says Maas, “dass im wesentlichen diese Verhältnisse für Theatertruppen vor 1642 normal waren, vielleicht mit Ausnahme der Königsgesellschaft und der ganz unbekannten Truppen dritten Ranges.” It will appear from what has already been said and from the material to follow, that not only the organization of the King's Men but that of every other Elizabethan company of which we know anything, differed decidedly from that of the two Restoration companies.
75 For which see Malone, iii, pp. 259-262. The quotations which follow are from this contract.
76 Whose employment, of course, was entirely in his charge.
77 The company had only the right to appoint “half the number of doorkeepers.”
78 In 1667 warrants for 1010 li. were made out in favor of D'Avenant and Killigrew (Chalmers, Apology, p. 530, and note).
79 Henslowe in his palmiest days could never have dreamt of exercising such power as did these Restoration managers.
80 Because of the uncertainties of the time.
81 Malone, iii, p. 95.
82 There is every reason to believe that the company D'Avenant intended to raise in 1639 was to have been a company of men. Two years earlier Beeston had been ordered to form and govern a company of children, “The King and Queen's Young Company.” Since D'Avenant's project did not materialize, he was given Beeston's place in 1640, when Beeston had fallen into disfavor. See Malone, iii, p. 240; Murray, i, p. 370.
83 See note 27.
84 Miss Gildersleeve and other writers on the government regulation of the theatres during this period (see, for example, Camb. Hist. Eng. Lit., vi, p. 246) have been content to note the increased activities of the censorship under the Revels Office, without examining the effect of the increased royal control over the companies in other directions.
85 A statute of 1604 forbade the licensing of players under the patronage of nobles (Fleay, Stage, p. 206). See note 27.
86 As early as 1612 the Chamberlain of the Queen's household was called upon to settle the Baskerville case out of court (Fleay, p. 281).
87 In 1639 the Lord Chamberlain warned “all masters and governors of playhouses” not to appropriate plays owned by the King and Queen's Young Company at the Cockpit (Malone, iii, pp. 159-60).
88 In 1633 the King's Men were given permission to draft actors from any other company at their own discretion to fill vacancies in their ranks (Mrs. Stopes, Shakesp. Jahrbuch, xlvi, p. 103).
89 See note 82.
90 See the documents collected by Peter Cunningham in the Shakes. Soc. Papers, 1849, pp. 95 ff. Heton asks that “the power for electing her Mts. Company of Comedians be graunted only to my selfe that I may alwaies have a Company in readiness at Salisbarry Cort for her Mts. service,”—and also that “such of the company as will not be ordered and governed by me as of their governor or shall not be by the Mr. of his Mts. Revells and myselfe, I may have power to discharge from the company.”
91 It is interesting to note that after the death of Shakspere the sharp competition between the companies of earlier days appears to have moderated to some extent. Malone states that “soon after his [Shakspere's] death, four of the principal companies then subsisting made a union, and were afterwards called The United Companies, but I know not precisely in what this union consisted” (iii, p. 224). He thinks it arose from “a penury of actors,” and that “the managers contracted to permit their performers in each house occasionallly to assist their brethren in the other theatres in the representation of plays.” I have been unable, however, to find any evidence pointing to “a penury of actors.” It is clear, however, that the actors of two companies occasionally gave a special performance of some one play. So, for example, Field's Amends for Ladies was acted “both by the Prince's Servants and the Lady Elizabeths” sometime before 1618. Again, in 1618 Hemings bought a Lenten dispensation “in the name of the four companys” (compare note 23). Sir Henry Herbert continues to speak of “the four companies” jointly in such a way as to indicate that some sort of working agreement may have existed between them. In the last decades of our period we do not hear of such another “ciuill warre … betweene players” as Dekker prophesied in The Rauen's Almanacke in 1609 (Grosart, iv, p. 210). On the other hand, their agreement, whatever it may have been, did not prevent the usual stealing of plays. The Induction to The Malcontent (1605) alludes thereto; again, in 1627, the Red Bull company had to he officially restrained from performing Shakspere's plays (see notes 24 and 25) and similar orders were required as late as 1639 (see note 87).
92 See Studies in Philology, xv, pp. 83-87. The purchasing power of Elizabethan money was six or eight times greater than that of our day—before the war. The reference covers my discussion of Sir Sidney Lee's view on this point. I believe that the evidence does not warrant his estimate of 180 li. for the annual income of actor-sharers.
93 See Henry Parrot's Laquei Ridiculosi or Springes for Woodcocks (1613), Epigram 131:
Compare Shaksp. Soc. Papers, 1844, p. 21.
94 Act iv, Scene iii, ed. Macray, p. 139.
95 Act v, Scene i, p. 144.
96 Thomas Downton of the Admiral's Men in 1599 hired “a couenante servant … for 11 yers … & he to geue him viii s. a wecke as longe as they playe & after they lye stylle one fortnyght then to goue hime hallfe wages” (H. D., i, p. 40), and Gabriel Spencer, who later enjoyed the distinction of being killed by Ben Jonson, bricklayer, is known to have had “his mane bradshawe” (H. D., i, p. 79.)
97 Shakspere in his will disposed of some 375 li. in money, and much land (Neilson and Thorndike, The Facts About Shakespeare, p. 208) but he, of course, as playwright and housekeeper had sources of income not open to most actors. Augustine Phillipps and Thomas Pope, who were also housekeepers, left 120 li. and 350 li., respectively, and other valuable property (Malone, iii, pp. 470, 506). Nicholas Tooley and Thomas Greene, who were not housekeepers, left 220 and 300 li., respectively (Malone, iii, p. 486; Fleay, Stage, p. 192).
98 Bullen's Middleton, iv, p. 157.
99 Literary Profession in the Elizabethan Age, p. 93.
100 See, for example, Gainsford's Rich Cabinet: “Player is a great spender and indeed may resemble strumpets who get their money filthily and spend it profusely” (Hazlitt, English Drama and Stage, p. 230), and Gosson, Plays Confuted, “Let them not looke to liue by playes, the little thrift that followeth their greate gaine is a manifest token that God hath cursed it” (Hazlitt, p. 217).
101 Characters, ed. Rimbault, p. 148.
102 “ An Apology for Actors,” Shakesp. Soc., 1841.
103 Op. cit., p. 267.