Note 1050 — XI THE ACTOR'S ECONOMICS
Reading edition
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.