Note 1007 — XI THE ACTOR'S ECONOMICS

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'.