Volume 1 / Book 2 — XI THE ACTOR'S ECONOMICS

[Bibliographical Note.—The material for this chapter is mainly to be found in Book III (Companies) and Book IV (Theatres) and the works there cited. My account of Henslowe is practically all based on W. W. Greg, Henslowe's Diary (1904-8) and Henslowe Papers (1907). W. Rendle made a useful contribution in Philip Henslowe (Genealogist, n. s. iv). Since I completed this chapter, useful studies in theatrical finance have been contributed by A. Thaler, Shakespeare's Income (1918, S. P. xv. 82), Playwright's Benefits and Interior Gathering in the Elizabethan Theatre (1919, S. P. xvi. 187), The Elizabethan Dramatic Companies (1920, M. L. R. xxxv. 123).]

WITHAL the actors, or the more discreet of them, prospered. This fact peeps out from the diatribes of their critics, and is indeed part of the case against them. The theatres are thronged, while the churches are empty. The drones suck the honey stored up by London's laborious citizens. Already, in 1578, John Stockwood estimates the aggregate gain of eight play-houses, open but once in the week, at £2,000 by the year. The players began to ruffle it, in garments fit only for their betters. 'The very hyrelings', says Gosson in 1579, 'which stand at reuersion of viˢ by the weeke, iet under gentlemen's noses in sutes of silke, exercising themselues too prating on the stage, and common scoffing when they come abrode, where they looke askance ouer the shoulder at euery man, of whom the Sunday before they begged an almes'; and in like vein Walsingham's correspondent of 1587 bewails to him the 'wofull sight to see two hundred proude players jett in their silkes, wheare five hundred pore people sterve in the streets'. It is, however, possible to lay undue stress upon the public finery as an evidence of prosperity, for this was apt to be borrowed from the tiring-house wardrobe, and in time it was found that the advertisement earned hardly justified the detriment to the common stock of apparel. The articles signed by those joining the Lady Elizabeth's men about 1614 bound them amongst other things not to go out of the theatre with any of the apparel on their bodies. The surest economic sign of a growing industry is the capacity to spend money on building, and it was a true instinct that led Stockwood to discommend the gorgeous playing-places erected at 'great charges' in the fields, and William Harrison to note it as 'an evident token of a wicked time when plaiers wexe so riche that they can build suche houses'. And when Robert Greene wanted to paint a picture of a typical successful actor in 1592, he made him describe himself as one who had once travelled on foot and carried his properties on his back, but now his very share in playing apparel would not be sold for £200, and he was reputed by his neighbours able 'at his proper cost to build a windmill'.[989] James Burbadge was 'the first builder of playhowses', and thereby laid the foundations of the prosperity of his family. He had been a joiner, before he became a player, and perhaps this suggested the enterprise of the Theatre, which he put up in 1576 upon borrowed capital. When his son Richard died in 1619 he was reckoned worth £300 a year in land. Even more fortunate was Edward Alleyn, who was in a position to retire from the stage before he was forty, to purchase the manor of Dulwich for £10,000, to build the College of God's Gift, and thereafter to spend upon the maintenance of his household and his foundation at the rate of some £1,700 a year. Other actors, mainly of the King's company, can be shown to have made their more modest piles. Thomas Pope, Augustine Phillips, Henry Condell, all appear from their wills to have been substantial men when they died. John Heminge is described in 1614 as 'of greate lyveinge wealth and power'. The Restoration story that Shakespeare spent £1,000 a year at Stratford is probably apocryphal, in view of the fact that his known investments only amount to a little over £1,000; but at least he returned as a moneyed man to the scene of his father's bankruptcy, and enjoyed consideration as the owner of the best house in his native town. Aubrey's statement that he left property worth about £200 or £300 a year, which gives him a fortune about equal to Richard Burbadge's, seems not unreasonable.[990] Like true Englishmen, the successful players sought after less material proof of their worth than was afforded by their lands and houses. Alleyn, having long been lord of a manor, and having connected himself by marriage with the Dean of St. Paul's, was desirous in 1624 of 'sum further dignetie', probably a knighthood. Others were content with acquiring or assuming a claim to armorial bearings, which would entitle them to rank as 'gentlemen'. Shakespeare in 1596 obtained a confirmation of a grant of arms made to his father as bailiff of Stratford nearly thirty years before; and in 1599 sought additional authority to impale the coat of his mother's family, the Ardens.[991] Heminges obtained a confirmation of arms in 1629. Such grants did not go altogether unstrictured by heraldic purists, and the cases of Shakespeare and of his fellow Richard Cowley formed part of the material for a charge of making grants to 'base and ignoble persons' brought by a rival against the responsible king-of-arms. Augustine Phillips and Thomas Pope did not trouble the heralds, but went to an heraldic painter, and bought, the one the arms of Sir William Phillips, Lord Bardolph, and the other those of Sir Thomas Pope, Chancellor of the Augmentations.[992] These ambitions of the players, no less than their investments, yielded stuff both for moralizing and for satire. Henry Crosse, in his Vertues Common-wealth (1603), rebukes the pride of the 'copper-lace gentlemen' who 'purchase lands by adulterous playes'.[993] And in the tract of Ratseis Ghost (1605), already cited, Gamaliel Ratsey speaks of those 'whom Fortune hath so well favored that, what by penny-sparing and long practise of playing, are growne so wealthy that they have expected to be knighted, or at least to be conjunct in authority and to sit with men of great worship on the bench of justice'; and he advises the country player, with whom he has fallen in, to get him to London, 'and when thou feelest thy purse well lined, buy thee some place or lordship in the country, that, growing weary of playing, thy mony may there bring thee to dignitie and reputation'. The player too heard 'of some that have gone to London very meanly, and have come in time to be exceeding wealthy'. Ratsey then knights him 'Sir Simon Two Shares and a Halfe', and tells him he is 'the first knight that ever was player in England'.[994]

Certainly all players did not grow rich, even in London. Some of them to the end, perhaps the majority, remained threadbare companions enough; in and out of debt, spongers upon their fellows, frequenters of pawnshops, acquainted with prison. Partly it was a matter of character. Those who had to do with the stage were not all such riff-raff as a hasty reading of the Puritan literature might suggest. Gosson, indeed, admits as much, allowing that some among those professing 'the qualitie' are 'sober, discreete, properly learned honest housholders and citizens well thought on amonge their neighbours at home'; while on his side Thomas Heywood is quick to maintain the harm wrought by the licentious to a calling in which many are 'of substance, of government, of sober lives and temperate carriages, house-keepers and contributory to all duties enjoyned them', and to plead that if there be a few of degenerate demeanour, his readers will not 'censure hardly of all for the misdeeds of some'.[995] Doubtless there is a certain instability of temperament, which the life of the theatre, with its ups and downs of fortune, its unreal sentiments and its artificially stimulated emotions, is well calculated to encourage; and we may perhaps find the victims of such a temperament in certain actors who, although clearly of standing in their profession, seem to have been constantly shifting from company to company, without attaining any secure position or, as one may conjecture, reaping any substantial harvest from their labour and their skill. One of these was Richard Jones, originally a fellow of Alleyn with Lord Worcester's men, presently selling to Alleyn his share of clothes and books, at one time reduced to 1s. a day or nothing, at another setting out to tour the Continent with Robert Browne, then back again with Alleyn amongst the Admiral's men, then transferring himself to the Swan and returning a few months later to the Rose, and finally allowing himself to be bought out for £50 and passing into obscurity. Another was Martin Slater, also at one time one of the Admiral's men, whom he left and went to law with, then a wanderer with Laurence Fletcher in Scotland, and afterwards successively traceable with Lord Hertford's men, with Queen Anne's, as a member of the King's Revels syndicate, and with Queen Anne's again as manager of one of the provincial companies travelling under the Queen's warrant. Perhaps it is merely another way of stating the same issue to say that the financial success of a player depended on his obtaining an interest, not merely in the day-to-day profits of a company, but also in the permanent investment represented by a theatre. This becomes readily apparent upon an analysis of the business methods employed in the organization of the dramatic industry. The basis of this organization was the banding together of players into associations or partnerships, the members of which acted together, held a common stock of garments and play-books, incurred joint expenditure, and daily or at other convenient periods divided up the profits of their enterprise. In a legal document an associate of such a company is described as 'a full adventurer, storer and sharer among them';[996] the term in ordinary use was 'sharer'. No doubt the sharing arrangement was in origin traditional; it is described in 1614 as 'accordinge to the custome of players'.[997] But it became convenient to formulate it in a legal agreement or 'composition', which provided for the co-operation of the sharers and defined their relations to each other. Thus the composition of the Duke of York's men in 1610 bound them to play together for three years, and deprived a member who left without the consent of his fellows of any interest in the common stock. Under that of Queen Anne's men about 1612 a retiring sharer was entitled to a payment at the rate of £80 for a full share. Such provisions, which were intended to obviate the breaking up of a stock, and of themselves indicate a substantial investment of capital, seem to have been usual. Alleyn had £50 on leaving the Admiral's men in 1597, Jones and Shaw £50 in 1602; under the composition of the same company, then the Prince's men, in 1613, a sharer retiring with consent was entitled to £70. Both the Queen's and the Prince's men made a similar allowance to the widow of a sharer. Each of the sharers signed a bond for the observance of the composition, which also covered certain disciplinary regulations imposed by the company on its members. Thus the articles signed by Robert Dawes, on joining the Lady Elizabeth's men in 1614, not only made him a partaker in the contractual and financial liabilities of the company, but also exposed him to penalties if he missed plays or rehearsals, or came late or in a state of intoxication, or took apparel or other common property away from the theatre. As the compositions grew more detailed and the enterprises more important, it proved convenient that one of the sharers should be appointed, formally or informally, to act as trustee and manager for the rest, to receive and make payments, to hold the composition, bonds, licences, and other legal papers, and generally to look after the business interests of his fellows. Thus it is pleaded in a lawsuit concerning Queen Anne's men that Thomas Greene was 'one of the principall and cheif persons of the said companie', and did 'laie out or disburse' moneys on their behalf; and that, after his death in 1612, the company 'did put the managing of thier whole businesses and affaires belonging vnto them ioyntly as they were players in trust' unto Christopher Beeston, by whom they were 'altogether ruled'. John Heminge seems to have acted in a similar capacity for the King's men, and to have had the custody of their deeds. He regularly appears as their payee at Court, and it is probable that he gave up acting in order to devote himself to business management. The members of a company did not invariably share and share alike. It is possible that in some cases the manager or a leading actor had a preponderant interest.[998] Tucca, in The Poetaster, at the end of his interview with Histrio, bids him commend him to 'Seven Shares and a Half'. So, too, Gamaliel Ratsey knights his player as 'Sir Simon Two Shares and a Halfe'. Perhaps this is only the chaff of the satirists. In any case one hopes that there is no foundation for the further suggestion of Tucca, when he offers to take the players into his service, and 'ha' two shares for my countenance'.[999] We know what Ratsey's corresponding threat to 'share with thee againe for playing under my warrant' means, for Ratsey was a highwayman, and levied his share not by 'composition', but at the end of a pistol. An actual example of a privileged share is that held by Alleyn in the Admiral's company about 1600, which seems to have been free of any liability to contribute towards the upkeep of the stock or other current expenses.[1000] The shares were often subdivided, so that some members of the company were full sharers, others half sharers or three-quarter sharers.[1001] The number of shares varied; an ordinary London company may be taken to have consisted of about ten or twelve sharers.[1002] For travelling purposes it is probable that separate compositions were entered into, except perhaps for short summer tours, and that the numbers were smaller.[1003] It should be made clear that the companies of players, although based upon the bodies of royal or noble servants constituted under patents or other warrants of appointment, were not precisely identical with these. Each company had to get the authority of such a warrant, before it was licensed to act at all, but the legal bond of association between its members was not the warrant, but the composition. As a rule the terms of the patents give or imply a power to those named in them to associate themselves with others. New members could doubtless be sworn into the service of the lord without any need for a fresh patent. But it cannot be held that every fellow sharer was necessarily a servant of the same lord, and still less that every servant named in a warrant was necessarily a sharer of any particular company acting under that warrant. Thus there is no proof that Laurence Fletcher, who is named first amongst the King's servants of 1603, ever acted with the King's men. Similarly Martin Slater and certain other Queen's servants and Gilbert Reason, a Prince's servant, did not, during long periods, act with the corresponding London companies, but toured the provinces with companies of their own, taking out for this purpose duplicates or exemplifications of the patents, a practice which came to be regarded by the authorities as an abuse.[1004] On the other hand, the servants of two lords sometimes played as a single company.[1005] Thus Lord Oxford's men and Lord Worcester's were 'ioyned by agrement togeather in on companie' at the Boar's Head during 1602. Similarly Lord Hunsdon's men and Lord Howard's came as a single company to Court in 1586; the Queen's men and Lord Sussex's were 'togeather' at the Rose in 1594, while Rosseter's patent for the Porter's Hall theatre in 1615 contemplates its use by no less than three companies, the Lady Elizabeth's, the Prince's, and the Queen's Revels, probably as a united body. Or the servant of one lord might attach himself as an individual to the company passing under the name of another. Thus Alleyn was still an Admiral's man when he toured with Lord Strange's men in 1593, possibly as the last representative of a more complete combination between two companies. Similarly Robert Pallant remained a Queen's man while playing successively with the Lady Elizabeth's and the Duke of York's in 1614-16, and William Rowley appeared in the Prince's livery at King James's funeral in 1625, although he had probably joined the King's men some two years before.[1006]

The sharers did not, however, take the whole risk of a theatrical enterprise; the owner or owners of the play-house stood in with them. This arrangement certainly goes back to the days of the elder Burbadge, 'the first builder of play-houses'. I do not know whether it had also prevailed in the London inn-yards. Instead of paying a fixed rent for the building placed at their disposal, the sharers assigned to the owner a fixed part of the takings at each performance. Originally Burbadge had the whole of the payments made at the entrances to the galleries; his successors contented themselves with half these payments, together with, at the Globe, half those made at the tiring-house door. The other half, and the full payments at all other outer doors went to the sharers. The owner was apparently allowed to safeguard his interests by appointing the 'gatherers' or money-takers for the galleries.[1007] When the Globe was opened in 1599 the Burbadges of the second generation hit upon the device of binding the interests of some of the leading actors more closely to their own by giving them a share in these profits of the 'house'. To this end the site was conveyed by lease in two distinct moieties. One the Burbadges held; the other was divided amongst five of the actors. Subsequently it was several times redivided into a varying number of fractions, according as one man dropped out, or it was desired to admit another to participate in the benefits. The tenures of the fractions, while such as to secure joint control, did not prevent the alienation of the profits attached to them. This gave rise to some trouble, owing to the remarriage of widows with persons who were not members of the company at all. Incidentally it enabled John Heminge and Henry Condell, who had business capacity, to buy up by degrees the whole moiety. There was a rent payable to the ground landlord, and to this each holder of a fraction made a proportionate contribution. A levy was also called when the Globe had to be rebuilt after a fire in 1613. The Burbadges claimed to have been at the cost of the original building and to have raised a loan for the purpose. We know that they pulled down the Theatre and carried the materials across the water. The lease of the Globe formed a precedent for a somewhat similar transaction when the King's men took over responsibility for the Blackfriars in 1608. In this case the freehold belonged to Richard Burbadge, who leased out the play-house in sevenths, keeping one fraction himself, and allotting the rest to his brother, to the representative of a former tenant, and to four of the players. At some later date the interest was divided into eighths instead of sevenths. It is to be noted that it was only certain selected men who thus acquired rights in the profits of the houses, and one of the effects of the policy adopted was to set up a distinction amongst the members of the association itself, of whom some were both 'housekeepers', as they came to be called, and ordinary sharers, while others were ordinary sharers alone. At the Blackfriars from the beginning, and at the Globe as rights under the leases were alienated, there were also housekeepers who were not sharers at all, and might even be members of rival companies. A dispute arising from these anomalies throws light upon the responsibilities undertaken and the advantages enjoyed by housekeepers and sharers respectively. It is of late date, but there is no reason to think that the conditions revealed were substantially different from those of earlier years. About 1630 all the rights in both houses were held, mainly through deaths and alienations, by persons who were not actors. Shortly afterwards two or three of the leading members of the company were allowed to acquire interests, and in 1635 three other sharers brought the state of things before the notice of the Lord Chamberlain, who exercised some equitable control over the affairs of the company as a part of the royal Household, and petitioned that they too might be admitted to the same privilege of purchasing fractions of the leases 'at the usuall and accustomed rates'. The pleadings and the orders of the Lord Chamberlain form the record known as the Sharers Papers.[1008] From them it emerges that the housekeepers were entitled to receive a full moiety, 'without any defalcation or abatement at all' of all takings from the galleries and boxes in both houses and from the tiring-house door of the Globe. The sharers had the other moiety, together with the takings at the outer doors. If a man was a sharer as well as a housekeeper, he claimed under both heads. The outgoings were also apportioned, and in the view of the sharers, most unfairly. The housekeepers only had to pay the rent and the cost of repairs. The sharers had to find hired men and boys, and to meet all charges for apparel, poets, music, lights, and so forth. The Lord Chamberlain was apparently impressed by the justice of the representation, and made an order for a transfer of interests in both houses.

The method of organization adopted by the Burbadges was subject to abuses, both from alienation and from the agglutinative tendencies of Heminge and Condell. But, at any rate during the earlier years of its working, it seems to have served its purpose of attaching the individual King's men, by means of a capital investment, to the welfare and stability of their company. It was adopted by their principal rivals, by the Queen's men at the Red Bull from the beginning of the reign, by Alleyn and the Prince's men at the Fortune from a somewhat later date. Certainly these companies rested upon a firmer foundation than those which had to look for their theatre to an outside capitalist, especially when that outside capitalist was Philip Henslowe. I have more than once had occasion to mention Henslowe, whose personality stands out, more clearly perhaps than any other, from the stage history of our whole period. It is to the labours of my friend Dr. Greg that we owe an adequate presentment of that personality. He appears to have been a younger son of a good family, originally of Devonshire, but settled in Sussex, where his father was Master of the Game in Ashdown Forest and Brill Park. He had evidently had little formal education, and was a poor man when, probably at some date in the 'seventies, he married Agnes Woodward, a wealthy widow, to whose former husband he had been 'servant'. Agnes had a daughter Joan, who in 1592 married Edward Alleyn, between whom and Henslowe, ever after if not before this event, the closest business and personal relations existed. The occupation which Henslowe thus, in the traditional manner of apprentices, acquired may have been that of a dyer; he is described in documents of about 1584-7 as 'citizen and dyer of London'. But he had a shrewd business capacity, which he turned to many other ways of making money. He was at one time engaged in the manufacture of starch. From at least 1587 onwards he was interested in theatrical property. Between 1593 and 1596 he was carrying on, through agents, a pawnbroking establishment. By 1592 at latest he had obtained an appointment as Groom of the Chamber at Court.[1009] In 1603 he was promoted to be Gentleman Sewer of the Chamber to King James. About 1594 he began to finance the Southwark bear-baiting, under a licence from the Master of the Royal Game of Paris Garden, and by arrangement with Alleyn who held the Bear Garden, and Jacob Meade who was Keeper of the Bears. After more than one unsuccessful attempt, Henslowe and Alleyn secured a transfer to themselves of the joint Mastership of Paris Garden in 1604. Meanwhile Henslowe was steadily amassing house property, most of it in Southwark, and some of it, at least by origin, of a rather questionable character.[1010] His own residence is given in 1577 as in the Liberty of the Clink, more precisely in 1593 as 'on the bank sid right over against the clink', whereby is doubtless meant the prison which gave its name to the Liberty; and in the Clink he continued to dwell to the end. For subsidies he was regularly assessed at £10. He filled parochial offices, becoming vestryman of St. Saviour's, Southwark, in 1607, churchwarden in 1608, and governor of the free grammar school in 1612. His death on 6 January 1616 was followed almost immediately by that of his widow in April 1617, and most of his property passed into the hands of the Alleyns, together with a mass of papers, which are now amalgamated with Alleyn's own at Dulwich. The collection is of the first importance both for dramatic and for social history. It contains title-deeds of theatres, agreements, and bonds entered into by companies of players, private correspondence between the members of Henslowe's family and with the poets and actors dependent upon him, inventories of stage costumes, book-holder's 'plots' or outlines of plays, and many other documents touching in innumerable ways upon the finance and control of the stage. It also contains Henslowe's famous 'Diary'. This is not in fact a diary at all, but a folio memorandum book, which Henslowe used principally during 1592-1603, and in which he entered in picturesque confusion particulars of accounts between himself and the companies occupying his theatres, together with jottings on many personal and business matters, and records of loans, which are often written, signed, or witnessed in the autographs of players and poets.

From the diary and the related documents it is possible to reconstruct in its main outlines the history of Henslowe's theatrical enterprises, and to contrast his policy as a capitalist with that of his rivals, the Burbadges. During the earlier years covered by our information, the theatre with which he was mainly concerned was the Rose, which he had himself built on the Bankside, although he appears also to have had an interest in the distant and practically disused house at Newington Butts. At one or other of these he entertained a succession of companies for the short periods during which playing was possible in the plague-stricken period of 1592-4. In the autumn of 1594 he settled down with Alleyn and the Admiral's men at the Rose, and this combination lasted, with some reorganization of the company in 1597, until 1600, when the Admiral's men moved to the newly built Fortune, and were succeeded a couple of years later at the Rose by Lord Worcester's men. It seems clear from an analysis of the accounts which he kept during 1592-7, that Henslowe, like the housekeepers at the Globe, was in the practice of taking his profits as landlord in the form, not of a fixed rent, but of a share of the daily takings at the theatre, and in his case also the sum allotted seems to have been half the proceeds of the galleries as distinct from the outer doors of the play-house. He was responsible for keeping the building in repair, and for the fees to the Master of the Revels for licensing its use; all other outgoings had presumably to be met by the company. If, as sometimes happened, the theatre was put at the disposal of some fencer or other performer not belonging to the company, the profits of the subletting were apportioned between Henslowe and the actors.[1011] It should be added that, under an agreement entered into when the building of the Rose was being planned in 1587, Henslowe had assigned half his profits for a term of eight years and a quarter to one John Cholmley in return for fixed quarterly payments. The covenants of the agreement entitled the parties jointly to appoint actors to perform in the play-house, and gatherers to collect the entrance fees, and reserved to each of them the right 'to suffer theire frendes to go in for nothinge'. They were to share the cost of repairs and Cholmley, who was a grocer, was to have the monopoly of selling drink on the premises. The agreement was probably terminated by Cholmley's death; if not, it would have served Henslowe for an insurance over the lean years of the long plague.[1012]

The character of Henslowe's entries in the diary changes towards the end of 1597, but the indications do not suggest any alteration in the conditions upon which the Admiral's men remained his tenants. On the other hand, the new series of accounts reveals certain relations between himself and the company for which there is no known analogy in the organization of the King's men. Quite apart from payments for the use of the theatres, the players had to meet divers costs of maintenance, including the purchase of play-books from dramatists and the provision of properties and garments for new productions. These charges were heavy and fluctuating, and proved a difficulty for men who lived from hand to mouth, and had acquired the thriftless habit of sharing their takings weekly or even daily, and keeping no reserve fund. Henslowe, as a capitalist, came to the rescue. Perhaps tentatively at first, but certainly from 1597 as a regular system, he met the claims of poets and tradesmen as they fell due, and debited the sums advanced to a running account with the company, which forms the main subject-matter of the diary. Of course he had to recoup himself from time to time; and Dr. Greg has made it pretty clear that, when the system was in full working, he did this by claiming a lien upon the residue of the gallery takings which, although collected by his own 'gatherers', would otherwise, under the tenancy agreement, have been handed over to the sharers. For a time he seems to have satisfied himself with reserving half of this residue towards his account. In July 1598, however, he notes in the diary 'Here I begyne to receue the wholle gallereys'. Even so the repayments did not keep pace with the expenditure, and from time to time he struck a balance and took an acknowledgement from the company of the amount of their outstanding debt. Most of Henslowe's advances were either for properties and apparel or for the writing of plays, and I see no reason to doubt that substantially the whole expenditure of the company under these two heads passed through his hands. Sometimes, but not always, he paid the fee demanded by the Master of the Revels for the licensing of a new play; and occasionally he put his hand in his pocket for travelling or legal expenses, or for the shot of a corporate jollification at a tavern. On the other hand, there were certain regular outgoings with which he had nothing to do, and for which the company must have had to make provision in other ways; for lighting and cleaning and the rushes which obviated the need for cleaning, for music, for the wages of stage attendants and those actors who were not sharers, the 'hirelings', as they were called from an early date.[1013] Probably the boys who took the female parts were apprenticed to individual sharers; in one case a boy was apprenticed to Henslowe, who charged the company or one of its members a weekly sum for his services.[1014] It is, however, interesting to observe that in the case of the Admiral's men, the legal instruments which secured the continuity of the services of individual actors sometimes at least took the form, for sharers no less than for hirelings, not of bonds given to their fellows, but of contracts of service entered into, under penalties for breach, with Henslowe himself. As it was open to Henslowe to terminate these contracts, the constitution of the company was to a certain extent dependent upon his good will, and in fact he more than once refers to them as 'my company'.[1015] He was not, however, in any strict sense the 'director' or even the 'manager' of the company. Dr. Greg more aptly describes him as their 'banker'.[1016] The entries of his advances on their behalf are so worded as to imply that they were made on specific authorities given by one or more leading members of the company; and some of these authorities in fact exist in the shape of letters asking Henslowe to make payments to poets in respect of plays which the company have heard and approved. That in practice the banker had a considerable say in influencing the policy of the company is probable enough; and also that to the poor devils of poets he, rather than the actors, must have often appeared in the welcome guise of paymaster. Both poets and actors were under frequent personal obligations to him for small loans;[1017] and he sometimes found the capital sum necessary to enable an actor to become a sharer, and took it back by instalments.[1018]

Henslowe's method of financing the Admiral's men endured for some time after their transference to the Fortune. Here, however, they prospered, and he notes himself in the diary as 'begininge to receue of thes meane ther privet deates which they owe vnto me'. The diary is practically closed in 1603. An exceptional entry in 1604 records that he 'caste vp all the acowntes from the begininge of the world vntell this daye' with the Prince's men, as they had then become, and found 'all reconynges consernynge the company in stocke generall descarged & my sealfe descarged to them of al deates'. It is possible that henceforward the relations of the company were less with Henslowe than with Alleyn, with whom they had entered into some kind of 'composicion' in 1600. Certainly the few remaining documents with regard to the Prince's men now at Dulwich seem to be of Alleyn rather than Henslowe provenance. Henslowe had, however, by agreement with Alleyn, a half interest in the 'house' of the Fortune, an arrangement which may have been modified if, as seems probable, some of the sharers were taken into partnership as housekeepers in 1608. Henslowe had a running account with the Earl of Worcester's men at the Rose from 1602; and these relations had probably also terminated when, as the Queen's men, they set up on an independent basis at the Red Bull in 1604. About 1611-15, however, we again become able to study Henslowe's finances, shortly before his death, in a group of related documents which illustrate and are illustrated by the diary in an extremely interesting way.[1019], The first of these is a bond in £500 given to Henslowe by the Lady Elizabeth's men in 1611 for the observance of certain articles. Unfortunately the articles are not annexed, but it may perhaps be taken for granted that they constituted an agreement under which the company were to play at a house provided by Henslowe. This may in the first instance have been the Swan, but in the spring of 1613 Henslowe probably acquired an interest in the Whitefriars, and in the following autumn he and his partner Jacob Meade entered into a contract with a builder to convert the old Bear Garden into a house capable of being used for plays, as well as for baiting. At this, which was renamed the Hope, the Lady Elizabeth's men certainly performed. The second document, in fact, consists of articles between Henslowe and Meade on the one side and Nathan Field on behalf of the company on the other, whereby the former undertake during a term of three years to house the company, to give them the use of an existing stock of apparel, including a suitable supply for travelling purposes if necessary, and to disburse such sums upon the furnishing of new plays with apparel as four or five sharers, whom Henslowe and Meade are to name for the purpose, may require. They also undertake to make similar disbursements for plays, receiving repayment after the second or third day's performance, to remove non-conforming players at the request of a majority of the company, and to hand over all forfeits for failures to attend rehearsal and the like. The close of the document is mutilated, but it is pretty clear that it provided for a nightly account of gallery takings, out of which Henslowe and Meade were to retain half for rent, and the other half towards the repayment of disbursements on apparel and of an outstanding debt of £124 until this should be extinguished. It is to be noted that, since the days of the Admiral's men, Henslowe had differentiated between the procedure for recovering his advances on account of apparel and of play-books respectively. The articles contemplate that individual players will be under contracts with Henslowe and Meade, and the third document is such a contract, dated 7 April 1614, with one Robert Dawes, who then joined the company. Certain covenants therein with regard to the personal conduct of the actor have already been described. In addition he bound himself to play for three years as a sharer in such company as Henslowe and Meade might appoint, and to consent to the retention by them of a moiety of the gallery and tiring-house takings for the use of the house, and of the other moiety towards the cost of apparel and the debt of £124. Henslowe and Meade also reserve the right to use the house for baiting on one day in each fortnight. The fourth document is the most illuminating of all. It is divided into two sections, one headed Articles of Grieuance against Mr. Hinchlowe, the other Articles of Oppression against Mr. Hinchlowe; and although unsigned was evidently drawn up by the company in the spring of 1615, for reference to some arbitrator, or perhaps to the Lord Chamberlain. The charges against Henslowe are partly of definite acts of dishonesty in the manipulation of his accounts with the company, partly of an oppressive use of his legal position to his own advantage and their detriment. If the allegations are well founded, he had cheated them by failing to bring to account sums due to them and to make a heavy payment with which they were debited, by charging the common stock with loans made to individuals, by putting an inflated value upon apparel taken over from himself, by saddling them with the cost of an excessive number of gatherers and with bonuses which he had promised out of his own pocket, in order to induce particular actors to join the company. Under these heads they claim a heavy rebate against the debt of £600 which he was maintaining to be due from them. They assert that, to gain his ends, he had bribed their own representative Field; that while bonds had been taken from them to an amount far in excess of their real obligations, the articles binding Henslowe and Meade had never been signed; that Henslowe had taken advantage of this to repudiate his liability to hand over the apparel and play-books, for the greater part of which the company had already paid; and that he had similarly taken advantage of the fact that the agreements with the hired men were in his name to withdraw these men, and thus force a reconstruction of the company, whenever it suited his convenience. Thus, they say, 'within three yeares hee hath broken and dissmembred five companies'. It is a little difficult to make up the number of five companies, even if the Children of the Revels, who during the years covered by the statement were absorbed for a time in the Lady Elizabeth's men, are included. But the transactions described serve well to illustrate the distinction between the status of a company as a body of household servants and its status as a legal association, since there is no reason to doubt that, throughout all the shifting phases of its relations to Henslowe, a continuous body of players performed in public and at Court under the title of the Lady Elizabeth's men, and by authority of the patent issued to these men in 1611. One other point, in which Henslowe's earlier practice appears to have undergone modification by the period of his connexion with the Lady Elizabeth's men, emerges from his correspondence with the playwright Robert Daborne. Instead of merely paying for Daborne's plays as agent for the company, as had been his practice for the Admiral's and Lord Worcester's men, he appears to have bought the plays himself, and resold them, probably at a profit, to the company.[1020]

The protesting players represent Henslowe's dealings with them as governed by a desire to be what the modern capitalist calls 'master in his own house'. They declare that he gave the reason of his often breaking with them in his own words, 'Should these fellowes come out of my debt, I should have noe rule with them'. The principle is plausible enough, and is familiar to tradesmen in all poor neighbourhoods. The man burdened with debt must lose the fruits of his labour, because he is not free to revise his contracts on terms more beneficial to himself. Once the players got out of debt and accumulated a reserve fund, they would acquire their own theatre, and Henslowe's might stand empty. If the charges were justified—and as Dr. Greg points out, we have not Henslowe's answer—he certainly resorted to oppressive devices to prevent the Lady Elizabeth's men from achieving independence. It must not be too hastily assumed that he followed a similar policy in his earlier dealings with the Admiral's men. So far as we know, they brought no accusation against him, and the connexion seems to have been advantageous to both parties. The Admiral's men held together, and maintained a standing hardly inferior to that of their principal rivals, the Chamberlain's men. They had Alleyn for a fellow; and it may be that Alleyn, whose 'industrie and care', according to the deposition of a common acquaintance, 'were a great meanes of the bettering of the estate of the said Philip Henslowe', was able to give his partner advice, more equitable and perhaps in the long run not less profitable, even from the capitalist point of view, than was afterwards forthcoming from 'intemperate Mʳ. Meade'.[1021] At any rate there is an agreement which shows that a compromise was arrived at after Henslowe's death with Alleyn and Meade upon the question of the disputed debt.[1022] I am not Henslowe's biographer, and am therefore not concerned either to whitewash or to vilify his character. But it is fair to say that, outside the Articles of Grievance and Oppression, there is not much, in the mass of papers which have descended to us, that necessarily bears an unfavourable interpretation. Henslowe's private loans to players and poets were innumerable. They were generally, but not always, repaid, and it would be difficult to prove that he even exacted interest in such cases, although it is possible that the full sums entered in his accounts did not really change hands. On the other hand, too much stress must not be laid on the expressions of esteem with which his debtors approached him. Thus Daborne dwells on 'your tried curtesy' and 'the great love I have felt from you', and Field, addresses him as 'Father Hinchlow' and signs himself 'your loving son', as if he were Ben Jonson.[1023] An application for money is, however, not even an affidavit. In his will he appears to have stated that he had not used his wife very well and would make amends;[1024] but his private correspondence reveals family affection and a turn for pious sentiment, probably sincere. Neither quality is necessarily inconsistent with unscrupulous methods of business. Whether Henslowe was a good or a bad man seems to me a matter of indifference. He was a capitalist. And my object is to indicate the disadvantages under which a company in the hands of a capitalist lay, in respect of independence and economic stability, as compared with one conducted upon the lines originally laid down by the Burbages for the tenants of the Globe. Not being owners of their own theatre, such a company were liable to eviction, and were drained to a large extent of the profits of their prosperous years. Relying upon their financier to meet in the first instance all extraordinary expenditure, they had no occasion to build up a reserve fund, and constantly tended to drift into debt. Organized upon a legal basis which made an act of association between the members of less importance than individual contracts entered into by sharers and hirelings alike with the capitalist, they were at his mercy if, for purposes of his own, he chose to use his powers under those contracts to bring about their dissolution.[1025]

A few figures bearing on the actual profits of playing can be brought together. And first for the 'house'. Henslowe's takings at the Rose, as disclosed by the diary, seem to have averaged about 30s. a day during 1592-7. A short season at Newington Butts brought him in no more than 9s. a day. As the Rose was normally open for about 240 days in the year, his total annual receipts may be estimated at £360. No doubt the cost of upkeep was substantial. The landlord had to find a site, build a house, maintain it in repair, and take out a licence. The ground-rent of the Rose was £7, of the Globe £14 10s., of the Fortune £16. The total rent of the site and building of the Blackfriars was £40. The building of the Fortune in 1600 cost £520, and its rebuilding in 1622 £1,000; the rebuilding of the Globe in 1613 about £1,400; the conversion of the Bear Garden into the Hope in 1613, £360. There was probably some set-off in all these cases for the profits from taphouses and other tenements attached to the theatres; this was estimated at from £20 to £30 for the Globe and Blackfriars together in 1635. There were also occasional lettings to outsiders.[1026] The housekeepers in 1635 complained of the 'chargeable reparacions'; in earlier years, when theatres were built largely of wood, they must have been more chargeable still. The Rose was not built earlier than 1587, but Henslowe had to spend £108 on it in 1592. The fee charged by the Master of the Revels for licensing a theatre rose during 1592-9 from £1 to £3 a month. The only estimates of net profits are for the King's men and of rather late date. The pleadings in Ostler v. Heminges (1615) give a single housekeeper's profits as £20 from one-fourteenth of the Globe and £20 from one-seventh of the Blackfriars, thus indicating £280 and £140 as the total annual value of the 'houses' at the Globe and Blackfriars respectively; those in Witter v. Heminges and Condell (1619), coming from a less trustworthy witness, allege that the Globe was worth £420 to £560 before the fire and more after the rebuilding.[1027] The bearing of the figures is complicated by our ignorance of the proportions in which the King's men made use of their two theatres. By 1635 the importance of the Blackfriars had outstripped that of the Globe. Its 'house' then yielded £700-£800 a year; that of the Globe about 54s. a day, nearly twice as much as the Rose half a century earlier.

As to the earnings of a sharer we have even less information. One of the disputants in 1635 put them at no more than 3s. a day at the Globe; another at £180 a year from all sources. If both were accurate, the Blackfriars must by that date have been doing far better business than the Globe, even after allowing for the inclusion in the £180 of a share of the fees for private performances at Court and elsewhere. The customary Court fee was £10, or £6 13s. 4d. if the King was not present. Private performances were ordinarily at night, and did not interfere with public performances in the afternoon. If the Court was out of London, however, the theatre had to be closed. No special allowance seems to have been made for this until about 1631, when the fee was doubled for a performance in the daytime or away from London.[1028] The King's men got the principal share of the Court work, being called on in 1611-12 for as many as twenty-two plays. Their Court fees during 1603-16 amounted on an average to £125 a year.[1029] The exact number of sharers is not known; it was probably not more than twelve. All things considered, it is not unreasonable to put the earnings of a sharer in the King's men during the first decade of the seventeenth century at about £100 to £150 a year, to which, if he were a 'housekeeper' with an interest in both houses, he might be able to add another £40 or £50. This estimate agrees with Sir Henry Herbert's valuation of the shares which he held before the war in the companies other than the King's at £100 each on an average.[1030] Sir Sidney Lee's figure of £700 for Shakespeare's total professional income, which includes £40 for the books of his plays, seems to me vastly overestimated.[1031] Even the more modest £200 or so was a handsome income for the time, since the purchasing power of money in the seventeenth century is variously reckoned at from five to eight times as much as at present. Of course, in times of inhibition from plague or other cause the income vanished altogether, and was very inadequately replaced by the meagre gains of travelling, together with the allowance made by King James to his men for private practice during the infection.

The gross takings of the sharers were naturally much greater. But they were subject to heavy outgoings. The King's men reckoned these in 1635 at £3 a day or from £900 to £1,000 a year for hired 'journeymen' and boys, music, lights, and so forth, in addition to 'extraordinary' charges for apparel and poets.[1032] The wages of a hireling are given by Gosson in 1579 as 6s. a week; some of Henslowe's agreements of 1597 provide for wages of 5s., 6s. 8d., and 8s.[1033] There was some economy to be secured by doubling small parts.[1034] How far this was facilitated by any use of masks is open to doubt.[1035] Boys were regularly employed to take female parts, and although it would be going rather too far to say that a woman never appeared upon an Elizabethan stage, women were not included in the ordinary companies.[1036] The boys were apprenticed to individuals, and their masters had to pay rather than receive premiums. In return they charged wages to the company. Henslowe gave £8 for a boy in 1597 and got 3s. a week from the Admiral's for his wages. John Shank in 1635 claimed that he had had to give £40 for a single boy, and £200 in all.[1037] Contributions to local rates came to about £5 a year.[1038] The cost of apparel and properties is difficult to estimate. A company bought or accumulated a stock, and might also have at its disposal a stock belonging to the owner of its theatre. Individual actors may have had their private wardrobes.[1039] Fresh purchases were only necessitated by new productions, but these were frequent. The special mounting of Court performances was helped out by the Revels Office.[1040] The actor in Greene's Groatsworth of Wit (1592) boasted that his share of apparel would not be sold for £200, but he was fictitious. Richard Jones, in fact, sold his share in a stock of apparel, play-books, instruments, and other commodities for £37 10s. in 1589. The cost of such things has a tendency to grow. If the sums of from £50 to £80 received by retiring sharers early in the seventeenth century may be taken as representing their interests in the stocks, the total value of the contents of a tiring-house might be anything from £500 to £1,000. Henslowe sold the stock of the Lady Elizabeth's men for £400 in 1615; apparently this did not include their play-books, which they valued at £200. I reckon that in 1597-1603 Henslowe spent in all £1,317 for the Admiral's men, or about £1 for each day of playing; of this play-books accounted for £652, apparel and properties for £561, and miscellaneous expenses for £103. The garments, by Henslowe's time at least, had become costly enough, as much as £19 being given for a single cloak, while a tailor was employed to make up satin at 12s. 6d. and velvet at £1 a yard.[1041] Second-hand finery was sometimes to be obtained from a serving-man or a needy courtier.[1042] It was probably the lavish use of apparel, more than anything else, which led both friends and foes to dwell upon the stately furnishing of the English theatres.[1043] Strictly scenic effects were limited by the structural conditions of the stage, and Henslowe's inventories do not suggest that any vast stock of movable properties was kept.[1044] Animals and monsters were freely introduced.[1045] Living dogs and even horses may have been trained; but your lion or bear or dragon was a creature of skin and brown paper.[1046]

An old 'book' could be bought for £2, but the value to the company might be much more. A good stock piece was a perpetual 'get-penny' and could, of course, be furbished up from time to time.[1047] In Downton v. Slater (1598) the Admiral's men valued a misappropriated book at £13 6s. 8d. and claimed £30 damages for withholding it. The court awarded £10 10s. New plays cost more, and entailed fees of 7s. each to the Master of the Revels for licensing.[1048] A play by Greene would fetch £6 13s. 4d. about 1592. The prices paid by the Admiral's and Lord Worcester's men between 1597 and 1603 ranged from £4 to £10 10s.; a fee of £6 may be taken as about normal. 'An they'll give me twenty pounds a play, I'll not raise my vein', says Antonio Balladino, who is Anthony Munday, in The Case is Altered, a play of about 1598.[1049] In 1613 Robert Daborne was bargaining for plays with Henslowe at rates of from £10 to £20, and boasting that he could get £25 elsewhere. It seems likely that Henslowe charged a commission on these prices to the company. There are some traces of the system, used at a later date, by which the author was entitled to a 'benefit' night shortly after the production of a new play.[1050] He was also entitled to free admission to the house.[1051] The poets received their fees from Henslowe in instalments, drawing £1 or so in 'earnest' when the commission was given, and as each batch of sheets was handed in, and the balance when the play was finished. This plan proved disastrous to them. The instalments often found them in a debtor's prison, and some of them became mere bond-slaves.[1052] Thus both Henry Porter and Henry Chettle were reduced to making agreements which pledged them to write for no other company than the Admiral's. The device is familiar to the modern publisher. Robert Daborne's correspondence with Henslowe is eloquent of the straits to which a hack playwright might be brought. Daborne was a man of good family, and had lawsuits about his 'estate', which added to his embarrassments. He had been interested in the management of the Queen's Revels, and it may have been the absorption of this company by the Lady Elizabeth's men that brought him into contact with Henslowe. His letters preserved at Dulwich run from April 1613 to July 1614.[1053] During this period he was engaged upon at least four plays. The history of one of them, the tragedy of Machiavel and the Devil, may be taken as typical. On 17 April 1613 he signed an agreement to complete it by the end of May for an 'earnest' of £6 down, £4 on completion of three acts, and £10 'vpon delivery in of yᵉ last scean perfited'; and for the observance of the agreement he gave a bond of £20. On 25 April he wrote to borrow £1 from Henslowe, explaining that he was 'vpon yᵉ sodeyn put to a great extremity in bayling my man committed to Newgate vpon taking a possession for me', and had unfortunately taken 'less money of my kinsman a lawier that was with me then servd my turn'. On 3 May he got another £1, although the three acts were not yet finished; another on 8 May; and another on 16 May, making £11 in all. 'Sir,' he wrote, 'my occations of expenc have bin soe great & soe many I am ashamed to think how much I am forct to press you.' On 19 May he had probably handed in his three acts, as he then signed an acquittance for £16 received up to date, noting at the foot 'This play to be delivered in to Mr. Hinchlaw with all speed'. It was not, however, ready by 31 May, and on 5 June came a piteous appeal for an advance of £2 'which stands me vpon to send over to my counsell in a matter concerns my whole estate'. Henslowe shall not be the loser by his kindness: 'wher I deale otherways then to your content may I & myne want ffryndship in distress'. By 10 June, 'yᵉ necessity of term busines exacts me beyond my custom to be trublesome vnto you', to the tune of yet another £1. By this time Henslowe was evidently calling out for the play; and Daborne protests, 'I perceav you misdoubt my readynes. Sir, I would not be hyred to break my ffayth with you; before God they shall not stay one hour for me.' He was still protesting on 25 June; but soon after must have brought Machiavel and the Devil to an end and drawn the £1 still due to him on balance, since on 18 June he was already beginning to negotiate for his next play, The Arraignment of London. And so the correspondence goes on; the instalments always anticipated, the applications always larded with declarations of his own honesty and with mingled flattery and complaint of a patron who, generous as he was, showed an inexplicable tendency to 'meat' Daborne 'by yᵉ common measuer of poets'. The result was inevitable. Daborne's terms came down from £20 to £12 and even £10 a play; and in addition to reselling to the company at a profit, Henslowe seems on one occasion at least to have squeezed out of Daborne 'half my earnings in the play', by which, I take it, the proceeds of his benefit are meant. By the end of 1613 Daborne was in considerable distress; 'if you doe not help me to tenn shillings by this bearer, by the living God I am vtterly disgract'. There is not much more of the correspondence. It is clear from another source that Daborne did not for some time get free, for when Henslowe lay on his death-bed, Mrs. Daborne called for some papers belonging to her husband, and Henslowe gave her a bond for £20 of which she was ignorant, possibly the very bond signed for Machiavel and the Devil, saying, 'I knowe you and with all my hart doe freely forgive you all that you owe me'.[1054] By 1618 Daborne had taken orders. He became Chancellor of Waterford and Prebendary and Dean of Lismore, and thus, as a contemporary poem has it, 'died amphibious by the ministry'.

The wrongs of authors are not inarticulate, and they have an appeal to posterity from the injustice of their age. The exploitation of poets by the playing companies brought about some cross-currents in the tone of the allusions to the theatre, which are so frequent in occasional literature. On the one hand, the pamphleteers, and in a less degree the satirists, are with the players as against their enemies the Puritans; on the other hand, they have their own grievances to publish and avenge. A note of hostility makes its appearance not long after the first invasion of the province of stage-writing by the university wits; and by the embittered close of Robert Greene's reckless life the relations were acute. Thomas Lodge in 1589 swore to abandon dramas and 'pennie-knaves delight.'[1055] Thomas Nashe canvassed the players in his prefatory epistle to Greene's Menaphon (1589), and Greene himself, with humour in his Quip for an Upstart Courtier (1592), and in his autobiographical romances of Never Too Late (1590) and Greene's Groatsworth of Wit (1592), and with unsparing invective in the warning To those Gentlemen his Quondam Acquaintance, that spend their Wits in making Plaies, which he appended to the latter. In these pamphlets the 'vaine glorious tragedians' are twitted with their mouthings on the stage, with their chameleon-like shifting from the service of one lord to that of another,[1056] with the contrast between their rapid rise to wealth and their obscurity when they carried their fardles afootback upon the roads, with the romances and morals—Delphrigus and The King of the Fairies, Man's Wit, and the Dialogue of Dives—that formed their stock-in-trade before the masters of arts came to their rescue. But the real gravamen is that they live on the wits of scholars. They are 'apes', 'buckram gentlemen', 'a company of taffaty fooles' tricked up with poets' feathers, 'puppits that speake from our mouths', 'anticks garnisht in our colours'. They cleave like burrs to their victims. An alleged comparison by Cicero of the Roman actor Roscius to the crow in Aesop is called in aid, and the taunt of 'vpstart crow, beautified with our feathers' is not spared to an actor before whose dramatic genius that of Greene and his fellows was to fade as a rush-light before the sun.[1057] The actors had something on their side to complain of, with Greene no less than with Daborne. In a remorseful moment he tells us of the 'arch-plaimaking poet' Roberto, how 'what euer he fingered aforehand was the certaine meanes to vnbinde a bargaine'; and a detractor accuses him of selling the same play to two companies, and defending himself by maintaining that no faith was to be kept with players.[1058] During the seventeenth century, it is mainly Dekker, as critic of the players, no less than in other ways, who carries on the tradition of Greene and Nashe.[1059] Himself an active playwright, it is with black looks that he stands by, in thronged term-time or at the coming of ambassadors, and watches the companies battening upon the fruits of divine poetry, like swine on acorns; and when plague arrives, although his own occupation be gone, it is with savage glee that he sees the flag hauled down and the doors closed, and his gloomy paymasters setting out once more on the hard life of 'strowlers'.

One interesting result of the feud between poets and players was that some of the former were led to encourage and even acquire financial interests in a rival type of theatrical organization which for a time at least entered into successful competition with the professional companies. This organization rested upon the use of boy actors. I have elsewhere expounded the important share taken by school plays in the earlier development of the Renaissance drama.[1060] The grammar schools of Eton, Westminster, and Merchant Taylors and the song schools of the Chapel Royal, Windsor, St. Paul's and the private chapel of the Earl of Oxford continued, far into Elizabeth's reign, to give their performances at Court side by side with the growing companies of noble and royal servants. It was not until the professionals called upon the university wits and began to mingle literary with popular elements in their productions that the destinies of the drama passed definitely into their hands. The earlier boy companies died out soon after 1590. A decade later the Paul's and Chapel companies were revived, the latter at least under somewhat new economic conditions. Formerly the plays had been managed by schoolmasters and song-masters, as by-activities of institutions primarily established for other objects. For the revived Paul's plays, so far as we know, Edward Pearce, the choirmaster, was similarly responsible. The Chapel children, on the other hand, were placed upon a more regular business footing. The official Master of the Children, Nathaniel Giles, took part in the undertaking; and the royal commission to impress singing boys, which he held, was unscrupulously used to compel the services of boys who could not sing, and were only needed as recruits for the stage. But long before James had come to the decision that on religious grounds the connexion between the Chapel and the plays must be broken, the actual control of the organization had passed from the Master to a financial syndicate, associated much on the principle adopted by the ordinary playing companies, whose members hired a theatre, charged themselves with the maintenance of the boys and of the performances, and divided up the profits as their reward. During the history of the Chapel boys and of the group of Revels companies which succeeded them, several of these syndicates came into existence, and shares in one or other of them were held by Marston, Drayton, Barry, Mason, Daborne, and very possibly also by other dramatists. The articles of association of the King's Revels company in 1608 may perhaps be taken as typical. One of the sharers, Martin Slater the actor, who was evidently a kind of manager, is to have lodgings in the theatre, which was the Whitefriars, and the right to sell refreshments, and is to travel with the children if necessary, in which event he is to enjoy a share and a half in the profits. The children are to be apprenticed to him for three years each, and he is to bind himself in £40 not to transfer the indentures. The 'whole chardges of the howse, the gatherers, the wages, the childrens bourd, musique, booke keeper, tyreman, tyrewoman, lights, the Maister of the revells duties, and all other things needefull and necessary' are to be deducted in due proportions from each day's takings, so that the company may not run into debt. No sharer is to take away any apparel or other common property, or print any play-book, on pain of losing his interest.

The boys played in what were called 'private' houses, and it is not quite clear how far they were amenable to the usual principles of stage regulation; an order by the Privy Council to the Lord Mayor to suppress plays during the Lent of 1601 was obviously intended to be enforced against them. Their performances, especially while they were novel, proved a serious menace to the prosperity of the adult companies. The classical allusions on the subject are that of Jonson in The Poetaster to the winter of 1600-1, which made the players poorer than so many starved snakes,[1061] and the elaborate apology for the travelling of the company in Hamlet, which is so germane to the matter now under discussion that it must, however familiar, be given in full:[1062]

Hamlet. ... What players are they?

Rosin. Euen those you were wont to take delight in the Tragedians of the City.

Ham. How chances it they trauaile? their residence both in reputation and profit was better both wayes.

Rosin. I thinke their Inhibition comes by the meanes of the late Innouation?

Ham. Doe they hold the same estimation they did when I was in the City? Are they so follow'd?

Rosin. No indeed, they are not.

Ham. How comes it? doe they grow rusty?

Rosin. Nay, their indeauour keepes in the wonted pace; But there is Sir an ayrie of Children, little Yases, that crye out on the top of question; and are most tyrannically clap't for't: these are now the fashion, and so be-ratled the common Stages (so they call them) that many wearing Rapiers, are affraide of Goose-quils, and dare scarse come thither.

Ham. What are they Children? Who maintains 'em? How are they escoted? Will they pursue the Quality no longer then they can sing? Will they not say afterwards if they should grow themselues to common Players (as it is like most if their meanes are no better) their Writers do them wrong, to make them exclaim against their owne Succession.

Rosin. Faith there ha's bene much to do on both sides: and the Nation holds it no sinne, to tarre them to Controuersie. There was for a while, no mony bid for argument, vnlesse the Poet and the Player went to Cuffes in the Question.

Ham. Is't possible?

Guild. Oh there ha's beene much throwing about of Braines.

Ham. Do the Boyes carry it away?

Rosin. I that they do my Lord, Hercules & his load too.

The be-rattling of the common stages and their spirited replies, thought by some to include a 'purge' in Troilus and Cressida, with which Shakespeare 'put down' Ben Jonson, form an element in the literary conflict known as 'the war of the theatres', in which, however, this issue is much complicated with others arising from the personalities of the dramatists engaged, and notably from that of Ben Jonson himself.[1063] Thus is explained the apparent paradox by which plays as well as pamphlets become the vehicle of attacks upon players. Three such plays, Histriomastix, The Poetaster, and the second part of The Return from Parnassus, call for special attention. The player-scenes in Histriomastix seem to belong mainly, though not wholly, to the original form of the play, which I regard as an outcome of the campaign of Robert Greene and his fellows about 1590, although the extant text, not printed until 1610, represents a later recension, probably undertaken by Marston, as one of the 'musty fopperies of antiquity' produced by the Paul's boys about 1600.[1064] The piece is of the nature of a political morality, and the scenes in question serve as one illustration of its general theme, which is that of the cyclical rotation of society through the successive stages of Peace, Plenty, Pride, Envy, War, Poverty, and so to Peace again. Many side-lights are thrown upon the methods of company organization which have already been described in these pages. In Act I some idle and drunken artisans, Gulch, Clout, Belch the beard-maker, Gut the fiddle-string-maker, Incle the pedlar, combine to form a company. Their poet is Master Posthaste, whom they call a gentleman scholar, but who is evidently a caricature of Anthony Munday, dramatist and Messenger of the Chamber. A scrivener is called in to 'tye a knott of knaves togither', and Bougie the mercer will furnish them with 'rich stuff' at a price. They call themselves Sir Oliver Owlet's men, and take his badge of an owl in an ivy-bush. In Act II they appear on the steps of a market cross and 'cry' a play to be given in the town-house at three o'clock. Their repertory includes The Lascivious Knight, Lady Nature, Mother Gurton's Needle (a tragedy), The Devil and Dives (a comedy), A Russet Coat and a Knight's Cap (an infernal), A Proud Heart and a Beggar's Purse (a pastoral), The Widow's Apron Strings (a nocturnal).[1065] Posthaste is also working on 'the new plot of the Prodigall Childe', with a prologue 'for lords' and an epilogue. They are invited to play before Lord Mavortius, and thereupon throw over 'the town play', and attend him, singing:

The actual performance, perhaps owing to a Marstonian interpolation, consists of a fragment of The Prodigal Child, together with a fragment of a piece on Troilus and Cressida. At the end Posthaste extemporizes on a 'theame' and the company are rewarded with 3s. 4d. In Act III a Marstonian passage introduces them to a new poet Chrisoganus, who asks ten pounds a play. But 'our companie's hard of hearing of that side', and they will be content with their goose-quillian Posthast'. Chrisoganus rates their pride and the 'windy froth of bottle-ale' which passes muster for poetry on the stage. The 'proud statute rogues' also refuse an offer from Mavortius of 13s. 4d. or even £1 6s. 8d. for another performance, and in view of their 'expense in sumptuous clothes' they must have 'ten pound a play, or no point comedy'. Their insolence is condemned:

In Act IV they are rehearsing, and fine Posthaste 1s. for coming late. And they quarrel amongst themselves. Clout is discontented with his half-share, and will have 'a whole share, or turn camelion'. Acts V and VI bring Nemesis. As they set up their bills, they are pressed for the wars. There is no remedy. They have alienated the town officers by refusing the town's reward. The 'master-sharers' must even provide their equipment out of their own purses. The soldiers loot their apparel. They will be the sharers now, and the players the hired men. They bid one who 'would rend and tear a cat upon a stage' not to 'march like a drowned rat', but 'look up and play the Tamburlaine'. The hostess claims her shot, 'The sharers dinners sixpence a piece. The hirelings —— pence'; and the hamper has to be searched for a cloak to pawn. The constable demands his dues for tax-money to relieve the poor, and the excuse that but fifteen pence was shared last week is not accepted in face of the idle and immoral lives that the rascals have led. In the end they are shipped off remorselessly to serve beyond the seas. It will be obvious that, while most of the points of criticism taken by the dramatist are those familiar to the literary pamphleteers, he is also not unsympathetic to the Puritan view of players as a canker in the state.

Jonson wrote his Poetaster in the spring of 1601. He had already heard of the intention of the Chamberlain's men against him, which afterwards took shape in Dekker and Marston's Satiromastix, and got in the first blows by depicting his assailants as 'a sort of copper-lac't scoundrels' in ancient Rome and their poets as Demetrius 'a dresser of plaies about the town here' and Crispinus 'poetaster and plagiary'. Some of his matter has its reminiscences of Histriomastix; some probably rests on details with regard to individual Chamberlain's men which are now irrecoverable.[1066] His allusions to their poor winter season of 1600-1 and to the accumulation of shares by leading actors have already been quoted. The chief scene devoted to the players is that in which Histrio is bullied by Tucca, the huffing captain, who calls him 'stalker', 'gulch', 'stiffe toe', 'twopenny teare-mouth', and 'penny-biter', bids him turn fiddler again, get a bass violin at his back and march in a tawny coat with one sleeve to Goose Fair, and accuses his company of being usurers and brokers, who prey upon younger sons and citizens, and furnish facilities at their house for immoral practices. Tucca would bring his 'cockatrice' to see a bawdy play, but the players have nothing but humours, revels, and satires; to which Histrio replies that he is confusing them with 'the other side of Tyber', for 'we haue as much ribaldries in our plaies, as can bee, as you would wish, Captaine: all the sinners, i' the suburbs, come, and applaud our action, daily'. Crispinus is introduced as one who will teach the actors to tear and rant. Tucca bids Histrio give him forty shillings in earnest, since 'if hee pen for thee once, thou shalt not need to trauell, with thy pumps full of grauell, any more, after a blinde iade and a hamper: and stalke vpon boords, and barrell heads, to an old crackt trumpet'. Yet inasmuch as some of the players are 'honest gent'men-like scoundrels, and suspected to ha' some wit', Histrio may make Tucca a supper, and bring Frisker 'my zany' and Mango 'your fat fool', so long as he does not laugh too much or beg rapiers or scarfs; but by no means 'your eating plaier' Polyphagus, nor 'the villanous-out-of-tune fiddler' Aenobarbus, nor Aesop, 'your politician'. Later in the play Histrio and Aesop inform against Ovid and Horace, who is Jonson, to the government, and although Tucca promises Aesop 'a monopoly of playing, confirm'd to thee and thy couey, vnder the Empirours broad Seale, for this seruice', his actual reward is to be whipped.[1067] In the Apologetical Dialogue printed with the play Jonson admits his hostility to the players:

The Return from Parnassus is of less significance, as being a Cambridge, not a London, play, and merely an echo of the main controversy. It was acted during the Christmas of 1601-2, and is a satire of things in general from the university point of view. Amongst other topics the relations of scholarship to the stage are touched upon. Burbadge and Kempe come in, boasting of their victory over Ben Jonson, and trying to recruit poets into their service.[1068] The scholars resent such thraldom:

And in the end they decide rather to take the road as fiddlers:

It is the old burden of Robert Greene and Thomas Nashe once more.[1069]

The disturbance of theatrical conditions due to the revival of the boy companies became in time less acute. No doubt, the novelty of their performances wore off. Moreover, the companies were not very successful in holding together, partly because of the indiscretions of their managers and the inadequacy of their finance to stand the strain of plague years, but more because the boys, as might perhaps have been expected, grew up and ceased to be boys. Already about 1608 the Blackfriars boys 'were masters themselves' of their own company, and when this arrangement broke down, they began to be drafted into the adult associations. Other boy companies followed, but these were subject to the same difficulties, and the vogue of the original 'little eyases' was never quite recaptured.[1070] But, after all, the competition had not disappeared, but had merely taken another form. The younger generation was knocking at the gates; Field and Taylor waiting in eager rivalry for Burbadge's shoes, and meanwhile forming new combinations of their own which, however unstable, at least cut at the profits of their more firmly established rivals. The 'monopoly' offered by Jonson in jest would no doubt have been welcomed by the principal companies in earnest. The policy of the Privy Council from 1597 to 1600 pointed in this direction, but for whatever reason was not brought into effective operation. There are several indications of the pressure of competition during the earlier part of the seventeenth century. In 1609 it was worth the while of the Queen's Revels and the King's men to unite in buying off the Paul's boys at the cost of £20 a year. Dekker in the same year prophesies that the contention of the two houses of York and Lancaster will be as nothing to that of the three houses, by which he means the Globe, the Fortune, and the Red Bull.[1071] Finally, in 1610, the preacher William Crashaw, commenting upon the hostility shown by the players to the plantation of Virginia, declares explicitly that it was motived by the fact that they were so multiplied in England that one could not live by another, and by the refusal of the promoters of the colony to give any of them a chance of trying their fortunes in the new world.[1072]

The palmy days of playing lasted beyond the formal limits set to this investigation. But they did not last for ever. The coming of the end can here only be adumbrated. It perhaps shows itself first in an increasing unwillingness amongst the provincial corporations to hear the players. It was in 1623, the year of the publication of the First Folio, that the City of Norwich took the step of making a representation to the Privy Council and obtaining leave not to suffer any players within their liberties. It is true that the inhibition was not strictly carried out and that the authority was renewed in 1640. Nevertheless it is a sign of the times. Other cities, Chester in 1615, Southampton in 1623, Worcester in 1627, closed their public buildings to performances.[1073] From this time onwards the entries of payments to players in municipal accounts tend more and more to take the form of 'gratuities' given them 'because they should not play' or 'to dismiss them', or 'to put them off', or in more emphatic terms still 'to rid the town of them'.[1074] Meanwhile the Puritan controversy breaks out again, winding up to that alarming compilation of learning and argument in Prynne's Histriomastix of 1633, which indeed cost its author his ears, but must none the less have hung like a shadow of fate upon the doomed stage for ever after. And in 1642 the shadow moved, and on the outbreak of war came that dignified ordinance of 2 September, which waved frivolity aside, what time the nation girded itself for matters of moment:[1075]

An Order of the Lords and Commons concerning Stage-playes.

Whereas the distressed Estate of Ireland, steeped in her own Blood, and the distracted Estate of England, threatned with a Cloud of Blood, by a Civill Warre, call for all possible meanes to appease and avert the Wrath of God appearing in these Judgements; amongst which, Fasting and Prayer having bin often tryed to be very effectuall; have bin lately, and are still enjoyned; and whereas publike Sports doe not well agree with publike Calamities, nor publike Stage-playes with the Seasons of Humiliation, this being an Exercise of sad and pious solemnity, and the other being Spectacles of pleasure, too commonly expressing laciuious Mirth and Levitie: It is therefore thought fit, and Ordeined by the Lords and Commons in this Parliament Assembled, that while these sad Causes and set times of Humiliation doe continue, publike Stage-Playes shall cease, and bee forborne. Instead of which, are recommended to the people of this Land, the profitable and seasonable Considerations of Repentance, Reconciliation, and peace with God, which probably may produce outward peace and prosperity, and bring againe Times of Joy and Gladnesse to these Nations.

Die Veneris Septemb. 2. 1642.

I need not here attempt to trace the faint flutterings of the mimetic instinct which survived this ordinance and even that, final and more detailed, of 9 February 1648, 'for the utter suppression and abolishing of all stage-playes and interludes', whereby players were made amenable to the statutes against vagabonds 'notwithstanding any license whatsoever from the King or any person or persons to that purpose', and the justices were ordered to demolish the houses, and to subject the players, if found, to a whipping.[1076] It is sufficient that from 1642 to 1660 there was substantially no public stage in London. Some of the King's men, we are told, went into the army, 'and, like good men and true, served the King their master, though in a different, yet more honourable capacity'. Under the Commonwealth they were 'reduced to a necessitous condition', and we have one glimpse of the last of Shakespeare's fellows, John Lowin, keeping an inn, the Three Pigeons, at Brentford, where he died very old, 'and his poverty was as great as his age'.[1077]

Printed in England at the Oxford University Press

FOOTNOTES