Volume 2 / Book 3 — BOOK III THE COMPANIES (continued 7)

The statement of grievances indicates another reconstruction of the company in March 1614. In this transaction, which apparently involved the buying out of Rosseter’s interest, Meade was in partnership with Henslowe, and Field was presumably in some position of authority on behalf of the players, as it is alleged that Henslowe bribed him, in order to obtain his assent to the modification of a covenant under which he was to make an allowance for a withdrawal of the theatre once a fortnight for baiting. The terms recited agree with those of an undated and mutilated agreement between Henslowe and Jacob Meade on one side and Field on behalf of an unnamed company of players on the other. The text of this follows:[699]

Articles of agreement made, concluded, and agreed vppon, and which are on the parte and behalfe of Phillipp Henslowe Esquier and Jacob Meade Waterman to be perfourmed, touchinge & concerninge the Company of players which they haue lately raised, viz^t.

Imprimis the saide Phillipp Henslowe and Jacob Meade doe for them, their executours and administratours, Covenante, promise, and graunt by theis presentes to and with Nathan Feilde gent., That they the saide Phillipp Henslowe and Jacob Meade or one of them shall and will duringe the space of Three yeares at all tymes (when noe restraynte of playinge shalbe) at their or some of their owne proper costes and charges fynde and provide a sufficient howse or howses for the saide Company to play in, And also shall and will at all tymes duringe the saide tearme disburse and lay out all suche somme & sommes of monny, as ffower or ffive Shareres of the saide Company chosen by the saide Phillipp and Jacob shall thinck fittinge, for the furnishinge of the said Company with playinge apparrell towardes the settinge out of their newe playes, And further that the saide Phillipp Henslowe and Jacob Meade shall and will at all tymes duringe the saide tearme, when the saide Company shall play in or neare the Cittie of London, furnish the saide Company of players, aswell with suche stock of apparrell & other properties as the said Phillipp Henslowe hath already bought, As also with suche other stock of apparrell as the saide Phillipp Henslowe and Jacob Meade shall hereafter provide and buy for the said Company duringe the saide tearme, And further shall and will at suche tyme and tymes duringe the saide tearme, as the saide Company of Players shall by meanes of any restraynte or sicknes goe into the Contrey, deliuer and furnish the saide Company with fitting apparrell out of both the saide stockes of apparrell. And further the saide Phillipp Henslowe and Jacob Meade doe for them, their executours and administratours, convenante and graunt to and with the saide Nathan Feilde by theis presentes in manner and fourme followinge, that is to say, That they the saide Phillipp Henslowe and Jacob Meade or one of them shall and will from tyme to tyme duringe the saide tearme disburse and lay out suche somme or sommes of monny as shalbe thought fittinge by ffower or ffive of the Shareres of the saide Company, to be chosen by the saide Phillipp & Jacob or one of them, to be paide for any play which they shall buy or condicion or agree for; Soe alwaies as the saide Company doe and shall truly repaye vnto the saide Phillipp and Jacob, their executores or assignes, all suche somme & sommes of monny, as they shall disburse for any play, vppon the second or third daie wheron the same play shalbe plaide by the saide Company, without fraude or longer delay; And further that the saide Phillipp Henslowe and Jacob Meade shall and will at all tymes, vppon request made by the Maior parte of the Sharers of the saide Company v[nder their] handes, remove and putt out of the saide Company any of the saide Company of playeres, if the saide Phillipp Henslowe and Jacob Meade shall fynde [the s]aide request to be iust and that ther be noe hope of conformety in the partie complayned of; And further that they the saide Phillipp Henslowe and Jacob Mea[de shall] and [will] at all tymes, vppon request made by the saide Company or the maior parte therof, pay vnto them all suche somes of monny as shall comme vnto their handes v[ppon of] any forfectures for rehearsalles or suche like paymentes; And also shall and will, vppon the request of the said Company or the maior parte of the[m], sue [ ] ar[ ] persons by whom any forfecture shalbe made as aforesaid, and after or vppon the recovery and receipte th[ero]f (their charges disbursed about the recovery [ b]einge first deducted and allowed) shall and will make satisfaccion of the remaynder therof vnto the said Company without fraude or guile.

Mr. Fleay and Dr. Greg think that at the time of this reconstruction the company was further strengthened by the incorporation of the Duke of York’s, now the Prince’s, men.[700] This I doubt, as the Prince’s men continued to play at Court, as a company quite distinct from the Lady Elizabeth’s, during the winter of 1614–15. It is true that Robert Dawes, who had been one of the Duke of York’s in 1610, joined the Lady Elizabeth’s, but it was precisely one of the grievances that this man and Robert Pallant were introduced by Henslowe, by means of a financial adjustment unfavourable to the sharers, in June 1614. Pallant had passed through several companies, and is traceable with Queen Anne’s men in 1609. He was still technically a servant of the Queen at her death in 1619.[701] A letter from Daborne on 28 March 1614 shows that he was then expecting an answer to some proposal made to Henslowe, which the latter had neglected.[702] Articles between Robert Dawes and Henslowe and Meade are on record, and bear the date 7 April 1614.[703] The following is the text:

Articles of Agreement,] made, concluded, and agreed uppon, and which are to be kept & performed by Robert Dawes of London, Gent. unto and with Phillipp Henslowe Esq^re and Jacob [Meade Waterman] in manner and forme followinge, that is to say

Imprimis. The said Robert Dawes for him, his executors, and administrators doth covenante, promise, and graunt to and with the said Phillipp Henslowe and Jacob Meade, their executors, administrators, and assynes, in manner and formme followinge, that is to saie, that he the said Robert Dawes shall and will plaie with such company, as the said Phillipp Henslowe and Jacob Meade shall appoynte, for and during the tyme and space of three yeares from the date hereof for and at the rate of one whole share, accordinge to the custome of players; and that he the said Robert Dawes shall and will at all tymes during the said terme duly attend all suche rehearsall, which shall the night before the rehearsall be given publickly out; and if that he the saide Robert Dawes shall at any tyme faile to come at the hower appoynted, then he shall and will pay to the said Phillipp Henslowe and Jacob Meade, their executors or assignes, Twelve pence; and if he come not before the saide rehearsall is ended, then the said Robert Dawes is contented to pay Twoe shillings; and further that if the said Robert Dawes shall not every daie, whereon any play is or ought to be played, be ready apparrelled and —— to begyn the play at the hower of three of the clock in the afternoone, unles by sixe of the same company he shall be lycenced to the contrary, that then he, the saide Robert Dawes, shall and will pay unto the said Phillipp and Jacob or their assignes Three [shillings]; and if that he, the saide Robert Dawes, happen to be overcome with drinck at the tyme when he [ought to] play, by the judgment of ffower of the said company, he shall and will pay Tenne shillings; and if he, [the said Robert Dawes], shall [faile to come] during any plaie, having noe lycence or just excuse of sicknes, he is contented to pay Twenty shillings; and further the said Robert Dawes, for him, his executors, and administrators, doth covenant and graunt to and with the said Phillipp Henslowe and Jacob Meade, their executors, administrators, and asignes, by these presents, that it shall and may be lawfull unto and for the said Phillipp Henslowe and Jacob Meade, their executors or assignes, during the terme aforesaid, to receave and take back to their own proper use the part of him, the said Robert Dawes, of and in one moyetie or halfe part of all suche moneyes, as shal be receaved at the Galleries & tyring howse of such house or howses wherein he the saide Robert Dawes shall play, for and in consideration of the use of the same howse and howses; and likewis shall and may take and receave his other moyetie [. . . . .] the moneys receaved at the galleries and tiring howse dues, towards the pa[ying] to them, the saide Phillip Henslowe and Jacob Meade, of the some of one hundred twenty and fower pounds, being the value of the stock of apparell furnished by the saide company by the saide Phillip Henslowe and Jacob Meade [. . . . .] the one part of him the saide Robert Dawes or any other somes [. . . . .] to them for any apparell hereafter newly to be bought by the [said Phillip Henslowe and Jacob Meade, until the saide Phillip Henslowe and Jacob Meade] shall therby be fully satisfied, contented, and paid. And further the said Robert Dawes doth covenant, [promise, and graunt to and with the said Phillip Henslowe and Jacob Meade, that if he, the said Robert Dawes], shall at any time after the play is ended depart or goe out of the [howse] with any [of their] apparell on his body, or if the said Robert Dawes [shall carry away any propertie] belonging to the said company, or shal be consentinge [or privy to any other of the said company going out of the howse with any of their apparell on his or their bodies, he, the said] Robert Dawes, shall and will forfeit and pay unto the said Phillip and Jacob, or their administrators or assignes, the some of ffortie pounds of lawfull [money of England] . . . . . and the said Robert Dawes, for him, his executors, and administrators doth [covenant promise and graunt to with the said] Phillip Henslowe and Jacob Meade, their executors, and administrators [and assigns] that it shall and may be lawfull to and for the said Phillip Henslowe and Jacob Meade, their executors, and assignes, to have and use the playhows so appoynted [for the said company one day of] every fower daies, the said daie to be chosen by the said Phillip and [Jacob] Monday in any week, on which day it shalbe lawful for the said Phillip [and Jacob, their administrators], and assignes, to bait their bears and bulls ther, and to use their accustomed sport and [games] and take to their owne use all suche somes of money, as thereby shall arise and be receaved

And the saide Robert Dawes, his executors, administrators, and assignes, [do hereby covenant, promise, and graunt to and with the saide Phillip and Jacob,] allowing to the saide company daye the some of ffortie shillings money of England ... [In testimony] for every such whereof, I the saide Robert Dawes haue hereunto sett my hand and seal this [sev]enth daie of April 1614 in the twelfth yeare [of the reign of our sovereign lord &c.]

Robert Dawes.

It must be mainly matter of conjecture at what theatres the Lady Elizabeth’s had played from 1611 to 1614. Possibly they may have begun at the Swan. Middleton’s A Chaste Maid in Cheapside was published as ‘often acted at the Swan on the Bankeside by the Lady Elizabeth her Seruants’, and although this publication was not until 1630, it is rather tempting to identify the play with The Proud Maid of 1611–12. Probably the association of the company with Henslowe led to a transfer to the Rose; and after the joining of forces with Rosseter in March 1613, the Whitefriars must have been available for the combination. That there were alternatives open in 1613 is shown by two passages in Daborne’s letters.[704] On 5 June he says that the company were expecting Henslowe to conclude ‘about thear comming over or goinge to Oxford’, and by ‘comming over’ may most naturally be understood crossing the Thames. On 9 December he claims that a book he is upon will ‘make as good a play for your publique howse as ever was playd’, and the inference is that at the time Henslowe was interested in a ‘private’ as well as in a ‘public’ house. Certainly the Watermen’s complaint in the spring of 1614 indicates that there were then no plays on Bankside, and both the Swan and the Rose must therefore have been deserted. But by the autumn the Lady Elizabeth’s men were in the Clink, occupying the newly built Hope on the site of the old Bear-garden; and that the use of this theatre was contemplated in the agreements of the previous spring is shown both by the presence of Meade, who is not known to have been interested in any other house, as a party, and by the reservation of one day in fourteen for the purpose of baiting.[705] It was at the Hope that William Fennor failed to appear to try his challenge with John Taylor on 7 October, and the Lady Elizabeth’s men were presumably the players—

who came to the rescue and saved the occasion from fiasco. And it was at the Hope and by the Lady Elizabeth’s men, as the Induction and the title-page show, that Jonson’s Bartholomew Fair was produced on 31 October. There is a reference in the text of the play to Taylor’s adventure,[706] and a compliment to Field, which puts him on a level with Burbadge of the King’s men.[707] Bartholomew Fair was presented on the very next day before James at Court. This performance, for which Field was payee on 11 June, was the only one by the company during the winter festivities of 1614–15. In February 1615 there was a breach between Henslowe and the company, as a result of which the Articles of Grievance were drawn up. According to the Articles Henslowe ‘brooke the companie’; but it is not quite clear what exactly took place. In some form the Lady Elizabeth’s men certainly continued to exist. They visited Nottingham in March 1615, and a letter from Lord Coke to the Mayor of Coventry shows that they also contemplated a visit to that town in the same month.[708] My impression is that they subsequently patched up another reconstruction with Henslowe, and that on this occasion the process did entail some kind of amalgamation with Prince Charles’s men. Field, however, probably now joined the King’s men. The Lady Elizabeth’s do not appear to have been separately represented when the Privy Council called the London companies before them for a breach of Lent on 29 March 1615. It is true that they may have been alone in not offending, but it is more probable that William Rowley and John Newton, who were summoned, answered for the amalgamation. The Prince’s men are recorded as playing at Court during the Christmas of 1615–16 and the Lady Elizabeth’s men are not. Yet the payee for their four plays, of which the dates are not specified, was Alexander Foster, who had been a Lady Elizabeth’s man and not a Prince’s man. But it is probable that both this amalgamation and the earlier one between the Lady Elizabeth’s and the Queen’s Revels, although effective as a business operation from Henslowe’s point of view, did not amount to a complete merging of identities, such as would entail a surrender of one or other of the official patents. Certainly the Lady Elizabeth’s, the Prince’s and the Revels were in some sense distinct, and yet in the closest relationship in 1615. So much is clear from Rosseter’s patent of 3 June to build in the Blackfriars, which contemplated that all three companies would share in the use of the new house. That the joint user extended also to plays is suggested by the title-page of Field’s Amends for Ladies (1618) which declares it to have been ‘acted at the Blacke-Fryers, both by the Princes Seruants and the Lady Elizabeths’. Perhaps this indicates alternative rather than combined playing. Whatever the arrangement, it was probably altered again on or before Henslowe’s death on 6 January 1616.[709] A company containing many of the former Lady Elizabeth’s men remained at the Hope. But they went under Prince Charles’s patronage, and it is not until 1622, when we find them at Christopher Beeston’s house of the Cockpit or Phoenix, that we can be sure of the presence of Lady Elizabeth’s men in London once more.[710] But they had held together in the provinces. Possibly the nucleus of the provincial company had been formed of men left out by the Henslowe-Rosseter negotiations of 1613–14. They first appear at Norwich on 2 March 1614 under Nicholas Long, who in 1612 had been travelling with Queen’s Revels boys. They came again on 27 May 1615 with an exemplification of the 1611 patent dated 31 May 1613, and again on 5 June 1616 under John Townsend, and again on 7 June 1617 under Henry Sebeck. In the same year Joseph Moore was acting as an agent of the Lord Chamberlain and Master of the Revels in clearing the provinces of irregularly licensed players, not improbably in the interests of the Lady Elizabeth’s themselves, whose original patent was now set free, through changes in London, for provincial use in place of a mere exemplification.[711] The company is also traceable at Leicester, Coventry, Nottingham, Marlborough, and elsewhere from 1614,[712] and on 11 July 1617 Townsend and Moore received a warrant for £30 in respect of three plays given before James during his journey to Scotland.[713] On 20 March 1618 Townsend and Moore, with Alexander Foster and Francis Waymus, obtained a new licence under the royal signet.[714] This authorized them to play in London, and their actual return there may have been earlier than 1622.

XIV INTERNATIONAL COMPANIES

i. ITALIAN PLAYERS IN ENGLAND

[Bibliographical Note.—The wanderings of the Italian companies in Italy itself and in France are recounted in A. D’Ancona, Origini del Teatro Italiano (ed. 2, 1891), and A. Baschet, Les Comédiens italiens à la Cour de France (1882), but without much knowledge of the few English records. W. Smith, Italian and Elizabethan Comedy (M. P. v. 555) and The Commedia dell’ Arte (1912), deals more fully with these. The literary influence of Italian comedy is discussed by L. L. Schücking, Die stofflichen Beziehungen der englischen Komödie zur italienischen bis Lilly (1901), and R. W. Bond, Early Plays from the Italian (1911).]

The England of Elizabeth and James was a lender rather than a borrower of players. No records have been disinterred of French actors in this country between 1495 and 1629;[715] and although there are a few of Italian actors, their visits seem to have been confined to a single brief period.[716] The head-quarters of Italian comedy during the middle of the sixteenth century was at the Court of Mantua, and when Lord Buckhurst went as ambassador to congratulate Charles IX of France on his wedding, it was by Louis Gonzaga, Duke of Nevers and brother of the Duke of Mantua, that he was entertained on 4 March 1571 ‘with a comedie of Italians that for the good mirth and handling thereof deserved singular comendacion’.[717] In the following year the Earl of Lincoln was at Paris from 8 to 22 June in order to conclude a treaty, and letters relate how he saw at the Louvre ‘an Italian playe, and dyvers vauters and leapers of dyvers sortes verie excellent’, and how later, when he visited the King at the Chateau de Madrid, ‘he had some pastyme showed him by Italian players, which I was at with hym’.[718] It may perhaps have been encouragement from one or both of these nobles, which led an Italian company not long afterwards to make its way across the Channel. The first notice of it is at Nottingham in September 1573, when a reward was ‘gevin to the Italyans for serteyne pastymes that they shewed before Maister Meare and his brethren’.[719] In 1574 the Revels Accounts include expenditure ‘for the Italyan players that ffollowed the progresse and made pastyme fyrst at Wynsor and afterwardes at Reading’. Elizabeth was at Windsor on 11 and 12 July; on 15 July she removed to Reading and remained there to 22 July. At Windsor the Italians used ‘iij devells cotes and heades & one olde mannes fries cote’; at Reading, where they performed on 15 July, the provisions included staves, hooks, and lambskins for shepherds, arrows for nymphs, a scythe for Saturn, and ‘horstayles for the wylde mannes garment’. Professor Feuillerat appears to suggest that they may have been playing Tasso’s Aminta, produced at Ferrara on 31 July 1573. But there were other pastorals.[720] The Italians are probably the comedians commended to the Lord Mayor on 22 July, and in November Thomas Norton calls special attention to ‘the unchaste, shamelesse and unnaturall tomblinge of the Italian weomen’. How long this company remained in England is unknown. There was an Italian acrobat at the Kenilworth festivities on 14 July 1575, but the description suggests that he was a solitary performer.[721] The Treasurer of the Chamber paid ‘Alfruso Ferrabolle and the rest of the Italian players’ for a play at Court on 27 February 1576, to the consideration of which I shall return. In April 1577 there was an Italian play before the Council at Durham Place.[722] Finally, on 13 January 1578, the Privy Council addressed a letter to the Lord Mayor, requiring him to permit ‘one Drousiano, an Italian, a commediante and his companye’, to play until the first week of the coming Lent. I take it that the company was also at Court, since the Chamber Accounts for 1577–8 include an item ‘for a mattres hoopes and boardes with tressells for the Italian Tumblers’. The company to which the visit of 1573–4 was due cannot be identified with any certainty. Presumably it came through France, and ought to have left signs there. There seem to have been three Italian companies in France during 1571. The first, in February, was that of Giovanni Tabarin. The second, that seen by Lord Buckhurst in Paris, was the famous Compagnia de’ Gelosi, of which one Signora Vittoria, of Ferrara, known on the stage as Fioretta, was the prima donna. This, however, had returned to Milan by the spring of 1572 and its subsequent movements hardly render a visit to England in 1573 plausible. A third company, that of Alberto Ganassa, a Zanni or clown from Bergamo, reached Paris in the autumn of 1571.[723] It was sent away by the Parlement on account of its high charges for admission, but returned in 1572 and played at the wedding of Henri of Navarre and Marguerite of Valois on 18 August. Nothing is heard of Ganassa in France after October 1572, but during the summer of 1574 he seems to have been in Madrid; so he also is not available for the English visit. It may very likely have been his company which the Earl of Lincoln saw. But it may also have been that led by Soldino of Florence and Anton Maria of Venice, which was performing ‘commedies et saults’ before Charles IX at Blois on 25 March 1572, and subsequently made its way to Paris. My authorities say nothing further about Soldino and Anton Maria, so we are at liberty to believe that Lincoln invited them to try their fortune across the sea.[724]

The ‘Drousiano’ of 1578 offers less difficulty. He must have been Drusiano, son of Francisco Martinelli, of Mantua, who in after years won a considerable reputation, although less than that of his brother Tristano Martinelli, as Arlecchino in the commedia dell’ arte.[725] There is no other notice of him before 1580, when he subscribes himself as ‘marito di M^a Angelica’, who appears to have been one Angelica Alberghini, and the company with which he was associated in 1578 is not known.[726] But it may very well have been the Gelosi. This company paid in 1577 their second visit to France, upon the invitation of Henri III, and remained there at least until July. They seem to have been in Florence fairly early in 1578, but some or all of them may have found time for an English trip in the interval. Direct proof that Drusiano Martinelli ever belonged to the Gelosi is lacking. But they are the only Italian company known to have been in France in the summer of 1577, and players are not likely to have passed from Italy to England without leaving some traces of their presence in France.[727]

The professional Italian actors of the second half of the sixteenth century played both the popular commedia dell’ arte and the literary commedia erudita, or commedia sostenuta. The former, with its more or less improvised dialogue upon scenarii, which revolved around the amorous and ridiculous adventures of the zanni, the arlecchino, the dottore, and other standing types, was probably best adapted to the methods of wandering mimes in an alien land.[728] The latter was common to professionals and amateurs. And I suspect that the Court play of 27 February 1576, although it earned its reward from the Treasurer of the Chamber, was an amateur performance. The ‘Alfruso Ferrabolle’ of the account-book can hardly be other than a clerical perversion of the name of Alfonso Ferrabosco, the first of three generations of that name, father, son, and grandson, who contributed in turn to the gaiety of the English Court. The eldest Ferrabosco was certainly in this country by 1562 when he was granted an annuity of 100 marks. His service terminated after various interruptions in 1578.[729] He is doubtless the ‘Mr. Alphonse’ who took part in the preparation of a mask in June 1572.[730] In connexion with the same mask, a reward was paid to one ‘Petrucio’, while for a later mask of 11 January 1579 ‘Patruchius Ubaldinas’ was employed to translate speeches into Italian and write them out fair in tables.[731] This was Petruccio Ubaldini, another of Elizabeth’s Italian pensioners, who was both a literary man and an illuminator, and made his residence in England from 1562 to 1586.[732] It is quite possible that the performance of 1576 may be referred to in the following undated letter from Ubaldini to the Queen, in which he makes mention of Ferrabosco.[733] If so, it came off after all.

Sacra Serenissima Maiesta,

Perché à i giorni passati io haveva promesso à M. Claudio Cavallerizzo, et à M. Alfonso Ferrabosco, d’esser contento di recitare ad una piacevol Comedia Italiana; per compiacere alla Maiesta Vostra; et non si trovando di poi altri, che tre ò quattro, che fusser contenti d’accettar tal carico; ho voluto che l’Altezza Vostra conosca da me stesso il pronto animo, ch’ io ho per la mia parté di servirla, et di compiacerla in ogni attioné, che me sia comandata ò da lei, ò in suo nomé, non solamente comé servitore giurato, ch’io gli sono; ma comé desiderosissimo di far conoscere, che la divotioné, ch’io porto allé sue Reali qualità, supera ogn’ altro rispetto; desiderandogli io contentezza, et felicità non meno, che qualunqué altro suo servitore gli desideri: la cui bontà Dio ci prosperi.

Di Vostra Sacra Serenissima Maiesta.

Of Claudio Cavallerizzo I regret to say that I know nothing.

A statement that Venetian actors were in England in 1608 rests upon a misreading of a record.[734]

ii. ENGLISH PLAYERS IN SCOTLAND

The interlude players of Henry VII, under John English, accompanied the Princess Margaret to Scotland for her wedding with James IV in 1503, and ‘did their devoir’ before the Court at Edinburgh.[735] It is the best part of a century before any similar adventure is recorded. In the interval came the Scottish reformation, which was no friend to courtly pageantry. Yet in Scotland, as elsewhere, Kirk discipline had to make some compromise with the drama. In 1574 the General Assembly, while utterly forbidding, not for the first time, ‘clerk playes, comedies or tragedies maid of ye cannonicall Scriptures’, went on to ordain ‘an article to be given in to sick as sitts upon ye policie yat for uther playes comedies tragedies and utheris profaine playes, as are not maid upon authentick pairtes of ye Scriptures, may be considerit before they be exponit publictlie and yat they be not played uppon ye Sabboth dayes’.[736] It was once more a royal wedding that led to a histrionic courtesy between England and Scotland. In the autumn of 1589 James VI was expecting the arrival of his bride Anne of Denmark, a sensuous and spectacle-loving lady, who had already had experience of English actors at her father’s Court in 1586.[737] And being then, two years after his mother’s execution, actively engaged in promoting friendly relations with Elizabeth, he sent a request through one Roger Ashton to Lord Scrope, the Warden of the English West Marches, ‘for to have her Majesties players for to repayer into Scotland to his grace’. In reply Scrope wrote from Carlisle on 20 September to William Ashby, the English ambassador at Edinburgh, begging him to notify the King, that he had sent a servant to them, ‘wheir they were in the furthest parte of Langkeshire, whervpon they made their returne heather to Carliell, wher they are, and have stayed for the space of ten dayes’.[738] After all, the Lapland witches and their winds delayed Anne’s crossing for some months, and James had himself to join her in Denmark. It is, I think, only a conjecture that the players whose ‘book’ was submitted on 3 June 1589 for the licence of the Kirk Session at Perth, in accordance with the order of 1574, were Englishmen.[739] But certainly ‘Inglis comedianis’ were in Scotland in 1594, probably for the baptism of Henry Frederick on 30 August, and received from James the generous gift of £333 6s. 8d. out of ‘the composicioun of the escheit of ye laird of Kilcrewch and his complices’.[740] Probably Laurence Fletcher was at the head of this expedition, for on 22 March 1595 George Nicolson, the English agent at Edinburgh, wrote to Robert Bowes, treasurer of Berwick, that, ‘The King heard that Fletcher, the player, was hanged, and told him and Roger Aston so, in merry words, not believing it, saying very pleasantly that if it were true he would hang them also’.[741] In any case, Fletcher appears to have been the leader of a company whose peregrinations in Scotland a few years later, much favoured by James, were also much embarrassed by the critical relations which then existed between the Sovereign and the Kirk. It is only a conjecture that this was the company which was refused leave to play at St. Andrews on 1 October 1598.[742] But of greater troubles, which took place at Edinburgh a year later, we are very well informed. They are detailed from the Kirk point of view in the more or less contemporary chronicle of David Calderwood.[743]

The King Chargeth the Kirk of Edinburgh to Rescind an Act.

Some English comedians came to this countrie in the moneth of October. After they had acted sindrie comedeis in presence of the King, they purchassed at last a warrant or precept to the bailliffes of Edinburgh, to gett them an hous within the toun. Upon Moonday, the 12^th of November, they gave warning by trumpets and drummes through the streets of Edinburgh, to all that pleased, to come to the Blacke Friers’ Wynd to see the acting of their comedeis. The ministers of Edinburgh, fearing the profanitie that was to ensue, speciallie the profanatioun of the Sabbath day, convocated the foure sessiouns of the Kirk. An act was made by commoun consent, that none resort to these profane comedeis, for eshewing offence of God, and of evill exemple to others; and an ordinance was made, that everie minister sould intimat this act in their owne severall pulpits. They had indeid committed manie abusses, speciallie upon the Sabboth, at night before. The King taketh the act in evill part, as made purposelie to crosse his warrant, and caused summoun the ministers and foure sessiouns, super inquirendis, before the Secreit Counsell, They sent doun some in commissioun to the King, and desired the mater might be tryed privatlie, and offered, if they had offended, to repair the offence at his owne sight; and alledged they had the warrant of the synod presentlie sitting in the toun. The King would have the mater to come in publict. When they went doun, none was called upon but M^r. Peter Hewat and Henrie Nisbit. After that they were heard, the sentence was givin out against all the rest unheard, and charge givin to the ministers and foure sessiouns to conveene, within three houres after, to rescind their former ordinance, and to the ministers, to intimat the contrarie of that which they intimated before. They craved to be heard. Loath was the King, yitt the counsell moved him to heare them. M^r. Johne Hall was appointed to be their mouth. ‘We are summouned, Sir,’ said M^r. Johne, ‘and crave to understand to what end.’ ‘It is true’, said the King, ‘yee are summouned, and I have decerned alreadie.’ M^r. Johne made no reply. M^r. Robert Bruce said, ‘If it might stand with your good pleasure, we would know wherefore this hard sentence is past against us.’ ‘For contraveening of my warrant,’ said the King. ‘We have fulfilled your warrant,’ said M^r. Robert, ‘for your warrant craved no more but an hous to them, which they have gottin.’ ‘To what end, I pray you, sought I an hous,’ said the King, ‘but onlie that the people might resort to their comedeis?’ ‘Your warrant beareth not that end,’ said M^r. Robert, ‘and we have good reasoun to stay them from their playes, even by your owne acts of parliament.’ The King answered, ‘Yee are not the interpreters of my lawes.’ ‘And farther, the warrant was intimated but to one or two,’ said M^r. Robert, and, therefore, desired the King to retreate the sentence. The King would alter nothing. ‘At the least, then,’ said M^r. Robert, ‘lett the paine strike upon us, and exeeme our people.’ The King bade him make away. So, in departing, M^r. Robert turned, and said, ‘Sir, please you, nixt the regard we ow to God, we had a reverent respect to your Maiestie’s royall person, and person of your queene; for we heard that the comedians, in their playes, checked your royall person with secreit and indirect taunts and checkes; and there is not a man of honour in England would give such fellowes so much as their countenance’. So they departed.

They were charged, at two houres, by sound of trumpet, the day following, at the publict Croce, about ten houres, to conveene themselves, and rescind the acts, or ellis to passe to the horne immediatly after. The foure sessiouns conveene in the East Kirk. They asked the ministers’ advice. The ministers willed them to advise with some advocats, seing the mater tuiched their estate so neere. M^r. William Oliphant and M^r. Johne Schairp, advocats, came to the foure sessiouns. The charge was read. The advocats gave their counsell to rescind the act, by reasoun the King’s charge did not allow slanderous and undecent comedeis; and farther, shewed unto them, that the sessiouns could doe nothing without their ministers, seing they were charged as weill as the sessiouns, and the mater could not passe in voting, but the moderator and they being present. They were called in, and after reasouning they came to voting. M^r. Robert Bruce being first asked, answered ‘His Majestie is not minded to allow anie slanderous or offensive comedeis; but so it is that their comedeis are slanderous and offensive; therefore, the king, in effect, ratifieth our act. The rest of the ministers voted after the same maner. The elders, partlie for feare of their estats, partlie upon informatioun of the advocats, voted to the rescinding of the act. It was voted nixt, whether the ministers sould intimat the rescinding of the act? The most part voted they sould. The ministers assured them they would not. Henrie Nisbit, Archibald Johnstoun, Alexander Lindsey, and some others, tooke upon them to purchasse an exemptioun to the ministers. They returned with this answere, that his Majestie was content the mater sould be passed over lightlie, but he would have some mentioun made of the annulling of the act. They refuse. Their commissioners went the second tyme to the king, and returned with this answere, ‘Lett them nather speeke good nor evill in that mater, but leave it as dead.’ The ministers conveened apart to consult. M^r. Robert Bruce said it behoved them ather to justifie the thing they had done, or ellis they could not goe to a pulpit. Some others said the like. Others said, Leave it to God, to doe as God would direct their hearts. So they dissolved. M^r. Robert, and others that were of his minde, justified it the day following, in some small measure, and yitt were not querrelled.

Several other documents confirm this narrative. The Privy Council register contains an order of 8 November for an officer at arms to call upon the sessions by proclamation to rescind their resolution and a further proclamation of 10 November reciting the submission made by the sessions.[744] The Lord High Treasurer’s accounts contain payments to Walter Forsyth, the officer employed, as well as gifts to ‘ye Inglis comedianis’ of £43 6s. 8d. in October, of £40 in November ‘to by tymber for ye preparatioun of ane house to thair pastyme’, and of a further £333 6s. 8d. in December.[745] It is George Nicolson, in a letter of 12 November forwarding the proclamation of 8 November to Sir Robert Cecil, who identifies the players for us as ‘Fletcher and Mertyn with their company’.[746] The bounty of James, although it must be borne in mind that the sums were reckoned in pounds Scots, probably left them disinclined to quit Edinburgh in a hurry. Another gift of £400 reached them through Roger Ashton in 1601;[747] and on 9 October in the same year they visited Aberdeen with a letter of recommendation from the King, and with the style of his majesty’s servants, and the town council gave them £22 and spent £3 on their supper ‘that nicht thaye plaid to the towne’. Nay, more, another entry in the burgh register tells us that the players came in the train of ‘Sir Francis Hospital of Haulszie, Knycht, Frenschman’, and one of those ‘admittit burgesses’ with the foreign visitor was ‘Laurence Fletcher, comediane to his Majesty’.[748]

Laurence Fletcher’s name stands first in the English patent of 1603 to the King’s men, and the inferences have been drawn that the company at Aberdeen was the Chamberlain’s men, that their visit was due to a proscription from London on account of their participation in the Essex ‘innovation’, that Shakespeare was with them, and that he picked up local colour, to the extent of ‘a blasted heath’ for Macbeth.[749] To this it may be briefly replied that, as the Chamberlain’s men were at Court as usual in the winter of 1602, any absence from London, which their unlucky performance of Richard II may have rendered discreet, can only have been of short duration; that the most plausible reading of the Scottish evidence is that Fletcher’s company were in the service of James as Court comedians from 1599 to 1601; and that there is nothing whatever to indicate that Fletcher ever belonged to the Chamberlain’s company at all. In fact, very little is known of him outside Scotland, although it is just possible that he may have been the object of two advances made by Henslowe to the Admiral’s men about October 1596, and described respectively as ‘lent vnto Martyne to feache Fleatcher’ and ‘lent the company to geue Fleatcher’.[750] If Fletcher was the King’s man in Scotland, it was not unnatural that he should retain that status when James came to England; and it is very doubtful whether the insertion of his name in the patent in any way entailed his being taken into business relations with his ‘fellows’. I strongly suspect that his companion at Edinburgh, Martin, was put into a precisely similar position amongst Queen Anne’s men, for who can Martin be but Martin Slater, who is often, as in the passage quoted above, called Martin tout court in Henslowe’s Diary, and who certainly left the Admiral’s men in 1597?

iii. ENGLISH PLAYERS ON THE CONTINENT

[Bibliographical Note.—The earliest comprehensive study of the foreign travels of English actors is that of A. Cohn, Shakespeare in Germany in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (1865). Much material has been collected, mostly since Cohn wrote, in a number of local histories and special studies, of which the most important are: C. M. Plümicke, Entwurf einer Theatergeschichte von Berlin (1781); D. C. von Rommel, Geschichte von Hessen (1820–38); J. E. Schlager, Über das alte Wiener Hoftheater in Sitzungsberichte der phil.-hist. Classe der Kaiserlichen Akad. der Wissenschaften, vi (1851), 147; M. Fürstenau, Zur Geschichte der Musik und des Theaters am Hofe der Kurfürsten von Sachsen (1861); E. Mentzel, Geschichte der Schauspielkunst in Frankfurt am Main (1882); O. Teuber, Geschichte des Prager Theaters (1883); J. Meissner, in Shakespeare-Jahrbuch, xix. 113 (Austria), and Die englischen Comoedianten zur Zeit Shakespeares in Oesterreich (1884); K. Trautmann in Archiv für Litteraturgeschichte, xii. 319 (Munich, Augsburg); xiii. 34 (Suabia), 315 (Ulm); xiv. 113 (Nuremberg), 225 (Suabia); xv. 209 (Ulm, Stuttgart, Tübingen); in Zeitschrift für Vergleichende Litteraturgeschichte, vii (Rothenburg); and in Jahrbuch für Münchener Geschichte, iii. 259; J. Crüger in Archiv für Litteraturgeschichte, xv. 113 (Strassburg); Duncker, Landgraf Moritz von Hessen und die englischen Komödianten in Deutsche Rundschau, xlviii (1886), 260; A. Cohn in Shakespeare-Jahrbuch, xxi. 245 (Cologne); J. Bolte in Shakespeare-Jahrbuch, xxiii. 99 (Denmark and Sweden), and Das Danziger Theater im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert (1893); J. Wolter in Zeitschrift des Bergischen Geschichtsvereins, xxxii. 90 (Cologne); A. Wormstall in Zeitschrift für vaterländische Geschichte und Altertumskunde Westfalens, lvi (1898), 75 (Münster); G. Witkowzski in Euphorion, xv. 441 (Leipzig). A collection of records from the earlier of these and from more scattered sources is in K. Goedeke, Grundriss der deutschen Dichtung aus den Quellen² (1886), ii. 524, and valuable summaries are given in W. Creizenach, Schauspiele der englischen Komödianten (1889), and E. Herz, Englische Schauspieler und englisches Schauspiel zur Zeit Shakespeares in Deutschland (1903). The excursus of F. G. Fleay in Life and Work of Shakespeare (1886), 307, is misleading. Additional material, which has become available since Herz wrote, is recorded by C. F. Meyer in Shakespeare-Jahrbuch, xxxviii. 196 (Wolgast), and C. Grabau in Shakespeare-Jahrbuch, xlv. 311 (Leipzig). Useful special studies are by C. Harris, The English Comedians in Germany before the Thirty Years’ War: the Financial Side (Publ. of Modern Language Association, xxii. 446), A. Dessoff, Über englische, italienische und spanische Dramen in den Spielverzeichnissen deutscher Wandertruppen (1901, Studien für vergleichende Litteraturgeschichte, i), and on the problem of staging (cf. ch. xx) C. H. Kaulfuss-Diesch, Die Inszenierung des deutschen Dramas an der Wende des sechzehnten und siebzehnten Jahrhunderts (1905). A collection of plays and jigs, in German, but belonging to the repertory of an English company, appeared as Engelische Comedien und Tragedien (1620); some of the plays have been edited by J. Tittmann, Die Schauspiele der englischen Komödianten in Deutschland (1880), and the jigs by J. Bolte, Die Singspiele der englischen Komödianten und ihrer Nachfolger in Deutschland, Holland und Scandinavien (1893). German plays written under English influences are to be found in J. Tittmann, Die Schauspiele des Herzogs Heinrich Julius von Braunschweig (1880), and A. von Keller, Jacob Ayrers Dramen (1865). Cohn prints, with translations, Ayrer’s Sidea and Phaenicia, Julio and Hyppolita and Titus Andronicus from the 1620 volume, and early German versions of Hamlet (Der bestrafte Brudermord) and Romeo and Juliet from manuscripts. The literary records and remains of the English players are fully discussed by Creizenach and Herz, and their relation to Ayrer by W. Wodick, J. Ayrers Dramen in ihrem Verhältniss zur einheimischen Literatur und zum Schauspiel der englischen Komödianten (1912).

The material for the Netherlands, some of which was gathered by Cohn, may be studied in J. A. Worp, Geschiedenis van het Drama en van het Tooneel in Nederland (1904–8), who also deals with the Dutch versions of English dramas. The contemporary stage conditions in France are best treated by E. Rigal, Le Théâtre français avant la période classique (1901), and those in Spain by H. A. Rennert, The Spanish Stage in the Time of Lope de Vega (1909), who uses the results of recent researches by C. Pérez Pastor, which have added much to the information furnished by C. Pellicer, Tratado histórico sobre el origen y progresos de la Comedia y del Histrionismo en España (1804).]

Thomas Heywood records, about 1608, that ‘the King of Denmarke, father to him that now reigneth, entertained into his service a company of English comedians, commended unto him by the honourable the Earl of Leicester’.[751] This King of Denmark was Frederick II (1559–88), father of Christian IV (1588–1648), and of Queen Anne of England. English ‘instrumentister’, Johann Krafftt, Johann Personn, Johann Kirck or Kirckmann, and Thomas Bull, were at the Danish Court as early as 1579–80, and in 1585 certain unnamed English played (lechte) in the courtyard of the town-hall at Elsinore, when the press of folk was such that the wall broke down. These may be the same men who played and vaulted at Leipzig on 19 July 1585, and are the earliest English players yet traced in Germany.[752] But the particular comedians referred to by Heywood were probably another company who had accompanied Leicester to Holland, when he took the command of the English forces in 1585, and had given a show, half dramatic, half acrobatic, of The Forces of Hercules at Utrecht on 23 April 1586. Certainly Leicester had in his train one Will, a ‘jesting plaier’, who is now usually identified with William Kempe, and in August and September 1586 the Household Accounts of the Danish Court record the presence of ‘Wilhelm Kempe instrumentist’, and of his boy Daniell Jonns. It is not clear what were the precise relations between Kempe and five other ‘instrumentister och springere’, Thomas Stiwens, Jurgenn Brienn, Thomas Koning, Thomas Pape, and Robert Persj, who were at Court from 17 June to 18 September 1586, and for whom the same accounts record a payment to Thomas Stiuens of six thalers a month apiece, at the end of that period. If he had, as is probable, been their fellow up to that point, he did not accompany them in their further peregrinations.[753] These took them to the Court of Frederick’s nephew, Christian I, Elector of Saxony (1586–91), as a result of correspondence, still extant, between the sovereigns, in which the offer of salaries at the annual rate of 100 thalers overcame the reluctance of the Englishmen to face the perils of an unknown tongue. They started with an interpreter on 25 September, and shortly after their arrival at Waidenhain on 16 October received instructions from Christian to follow him with mourning clothes to Berlin, where he was then sojourning. Christian’s own capital was Dresden, and here they held a formal appointment in his service, under which they were bound to follow him in his travels, and to entertain him with performances after his banquets, and with music and ‘Springkunst’, and were entitled, beyond their pay, to board, livery, and travelling expenses, and a lodging allowance of forty thalers each. The Dresden archives give their names as Tomas Konigk, Tomas Stephan or Stephans, George Beyzandt, Tomas Papst, and Rupert Persten. Their departure from Court is recorded on 17 July 1587.[754] In all these notices music and acrobatic feats are to the fore, but that the men were actors there can be no doubt, for two of them, Thomas Pope and George Bryan, reappear amongst Strange’s men, and thereafter as fellows of Shakespeare in the Chamberlain’s company. Of Stevens, King, and Percy no more is known. Kempe was abroad again, in Italy and Germany, during 1601, and returned to England on 2 September. It is not certain whether he took a company with him, or went as a solitary morris dancer. But it is noteworthy that on the following 26 November an English company, under one Johann Kemp, reached Münster, after a tour which had taken them to Amsterdam, Cologne, Redberg, and Steinfurt. They played in English, and had a clown who pattered in German between the acts.[755]

The man, however, who did most to acclimatize the English actors in Germany was Robert Browne, who paid several visits to the country, and spent considerable periods there between 1590 and 1620. With him he took relays of actors, some of whom split off into independent associations, and account for most, although not all, of the groups of ‘Engländer’ who became familiar figures at the Frankfort spring and autumn fairs and even in out-of-the-way corners of northern Europe. Of some of these groups the wanderings can be traced in outline, although the frequent failure of the archives to record individual names is responsible for many lacunae, which the conjectural ingenuity of literary historians has done its best to fill. Many of these anonymous performances I must pass over in silence.

Robert Browne first appears as one of Worcester’s men, with Edward Alleyn, in 1583, and in 1589 these two, probably as Admiral’s men, still held a common stock of apparel with John Alleyn and Richard Jones.[756] His career abroad begins with a visit to Leyden in October 1590.[757] This was perhaps only tentative, for in February 1592 he was preparing to cross the seas again, and to this end obtained for himself, John Bradstreet, Thomas Sackville, and Richard Jones, the following passport to the States-General of the Netherlands from the Lord Admiral:

Messieurs, comme les présents porteurs, Robert Browne, Jehan Bradstriet, Thomas Saxfield, Richard Jones, ont deliberé de faire ung voyage en Allemagne, avec intention de passer par le païs de Zelande, Hollande et Frise, et allantz en leur dict voyage d’exercer leurs qualitez en faict de musique, agilitez et joeux de commedies, tragedies et histoires, pour s’entretenir et fournir à leurs despenses en leur dict voyage. Cestes sont partant vous requerir monstrer et prester toute faveur en voz païs et jurisdictions, et leur octroyer en ma faveur vostre ample passeport soubz le seel des Estatz, afin que les Bourgmestres des villes estantz soubs voz jurisdictions ne les empeschent en passant d’exercer leurs dictes qualitez par tout. Enquoy faisant, je vous demeureray à tous obligé, et me treuverez très appareillé à me revencher de vostre courtoisie en plus grand cas. De ma chambre à la court d’Angleterre ce x^me jour de Febvrier 1591.

Vostre tres affecsionné à vous fayre plaisir et sarvis,

C. Howard.[758]

Presumably the Lord Admiral gave this passport in his official capacity, as responsible for the high seas, and it is not necessary to infer that the travellers were in 1592 his servants.[759]

There are not many clear notices of Browne and his company during this tour. They were at Arnhem, with a licence from Prince Maurice of Orange-Nassau, in 1592.[760] Thereafter they may have gone into residence at some Court, Wolfenbüttel or another. They can hardly have been the English ‘comoedianten und springer’ who came to Nyköping in Sweden for the wedding of Duke Karl of Sweden and Princess Christina of Holstein on 28 August 1592[761]; for it was only two days later that Browne approached the Frankfort magistrates for leave to play at the autumn fair, where they gave Gammer Gurton’s Needle and some of Marlowe’s plays.[762] It was on this occasion that Fynes Moryson, the traveller, visited the fair and noted the great vogue of the English actors amongst the merchants.[763] Englishmen played at Cologne in October and November 1592,[764] and at Nuremberg in August 1593;[765] but in view of the Nyköping company it can hardly be assumed that these were Browne and his fellows, and indeed the leader at Nuremberg is called ‘Ruberto Gruen’, which may, but on the other hand may not, be a blunder for Browne’s name. The Cologne players are anonymous. At any rate ‘Robert Braun, Thomas Sachsweil, Johan Bradenstreit und consorten’ were all at Frankfort in August 1593,[766] where they played scriptural dramas, including Abraham and Lot and The Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrha. Thereafter the company seems to have broken up. Richard Jones certainly went home before 2 September 1594, when he bought a gown ‘of pechecoler in grayne’ from Henslowe.[767] He had doubtless already joined the Admiral’s men.

Thomas Sackville and John Bradstreet probably went to Wolfenbüttel. This was the capital of Henry Julius, Duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel (1589–1613), himself the author of plays, mostly printed during 1593 and 1594, in which an English influence is perceptible. The Duke married Elisabeth, daughter of Frederick II of Denmark, and his wedding at Copenhagen in February 1590 was attended by his brother-in-law, afterwards James I of England. It is possible that his earliest play, Susanna, was written either for this occasion or for the repetition of his wedding ceremony at Wolfenbüttel. In this piece the jester, a conventional personage, bears the name ‘Johan Clant’, in the later plays ‘Johan Bouset’; and in the Ehebrecherin (1594) Bouset says, quite irrelevantly to his dramatic character, ‘Ich bin ein Englisch Mann’. Both names are in fact of English origin, from the words ‘clown’ and ‘posset’ respectively. Evidently the Duke must in some way have been in touch with the English stage at a date even earlier than Browne’s second German visit in 1592. It is not, therefore, necessary to conjecture, as has been conjectured, that Wolfenbüttel was the first objective of this visit.[768] Unfortunately the Brunswick household accounts for 1590–1601 are missing, and with them all direct evidence of the first formation of his English company by the Duke has probably gone. The company existed by 1596, when the ‘furstelige comoedianten och springers’ of the Duke paid a month’s visit to Copenhagen for the coronation of his brother-in-law, Christian IV of Denmark, on 29 August.[769] In the following year we find ‘Jan Bosett und seine Gesellen’ at Nuremberg, ‘Thomas Sackfeil und Consorten’ at Augsburg in June, ‘Johann Busset’ and Jakob Behel at Strassburg in July and August, and ‘Thomas Sackville, John Bouset genannt’, Johann Breitenstrasse and Jacob Biel at the Frankfort autumn fair.[770] The identity of this company with the Wolfenbüttel court comedians may perhaps be inferred from Sackville’s use of John Bouset as a stage name, and from a reference, in this same year 1597, to ‘Thomas Sackefiel, princely servant at Wolfenbüttel’. Another member of the company may have been Edward Wakefiel, with whom Sackville, also in 1597, had a brawl in a Brunswick tavern.[771] No more is heard of them until 1601, when John Bouset was expected to join his old friend Robert Browne for the Frankfort Easter fair.[772] The Brunswick household accounts are extant for 1602 and 1608, and from 1614 onwards. Thomas Sackville appears frequently. On 30 August 1602 he took a payment for the English comedians. Later references to him from 1 October 1602 to 1617 are mainly in connexion with purchases for the ducal wardrobe. It seems clear that, while remaining a ducal servant, and possibly even an actor, he went into business and prospered therein.[773] He is said to have been selling silk at Frankfort in 1604, and in 1608 Thomas Coryat, the Odcombian traveller and oddity, records:

‘The wealth that I sawe here was incredible. The goodliest shew of ware that I sawe in all Franckford, saving that of the Goldsmithes, was made by an Englishman one Thomas Sackfield a Dorsetshire man, once a servant of my father, who went out of England but in a meane estate, but after he had spent a few yeares at the Duke of Brunswicks Court, hee so inriched himselfe of late that his glittering shewe of ware in Franckford dit farre excell all the Dutchmen, French, Italians, or whomsoever else.’[774]

John Bradstreet’s name appears in 1604 with that of Sackville in the album of Johannes Cellarius of Nuremberg. He died in 1618 and Sackville in 1628, leaving a library of theology and English literature. Edward Wakefield reappears in the Brunswick accounts for 1602, not specifically as a player. But certainly the playing company continued to exist. The accounts mention it in 1608, and Thomas Heywood notes its existence about the same date. There were English players at Wolfenbüttel in May 1615 and at Brunswick in 1611 and 1617, but no names are recorded, and it can hardly be assumed that these were the original ducal company. Henry Julius himself died in 1613.[775]

Robert Browne’s own movements are uncertain after the break-up of his company in 1593. He is not traceable for a year or so either in Germany or in England, where his wife and all her children and household died of plague in Shoreditch about August 1593.[776] But sooner or later he found his way to Cassel. This was another of the literary courts of Germany, the capital of Maurice the Learned, Landgrave of Hesse-Cassel (1592–1627). Maurice himself wrote an ‘Anglia Comoedia’ and other plays in Terentian Latin, which were performed by the pupils of the Collegium Mauritianum, but are unfortunately not preserved. He also composed music and, like the Duke of Brunswick, gave a welcome to John Dowland on one of his several foreign tours.[777] Possibly Dowland was one of the two lutenists who are recorded to have spent fifteen weeks at Cassel in 1594.[778] In the following year there were performances by players and acrobats at Maurice’s castle of Wilhelmsburg at Schmalkalden, and in the same year Maurice wrote to his agent at Prague to give assistance to his comedians in the event of their visiting that city.[779] To 1594 or 1595 may, therefore, be plausibly ascribed undated warrants by which Robert Browne and Philip Kiningsmann receive appointments from the Landgrave, undertaking to do him service with their company in vocal and instrumental music and in plays to be supplied either by Maurice or by themselves, and not to leave Cassel without his permission.[780] Certainly Browne was the Landgrave’s man by 16 April 1595, when a warrant was issued allowing the export of a consignment of bows and arrows which he had been sent over to bring from England to Cassel.[781] The ‘fürstlich hessische Diener und Comoetianten’ were at Nuremberg on 5 July 1596, and a company under Philip Konigsman were at Strassburg in the following August.[782] Festivities were now in preparation at Cassel for the christening of Maurice’s daughter, one of whose godmothers was Queen Elizabeth, on 24 August 1596. Brown and one John Webster were on duty at Cassel during the visit of the Earl of Lincoln, who came from England to stand proxy for Elizabeth.[783] Payments to the English comedians and performances by them at Melsungen, Weissenstein, and Rothenburg, in the Landgrave’s territory, are recorded in the Cassel archives during 1597 and 1598. A proposed loan of them in 1597 to Landgrave Louis of Marburg seems to have fallen through, but in 1598 they left Cassel for the Court of the Palsgrave Frederic IV at Heidelberg, with a liberal Abfertigung or vail of 300 thalers and a travelling allowance of 20 thalers, which was entrusted to George Webster.[784] From Heidelberg they went to Frankfort towards the end of 1599, but were refused leave to play, owing to the prevalence of plague.[785] Robert Browne, Robert Kingman, and Robert Ledbetter were then of the company. Ledbetter must have recently joined them, as he is in the cast of Frederick and Basilea as played by the Admiral’s men in 1597. Frankfort having failed them, they fell back upon Strassburg, and here they seem to have remained until the spring of 1601.[786] Browne was their leader at their arrival, but he then seems to have left them and returned to England, where he came to Court as manager of the Earl of Derby’s men during the winters of 1599–1600 and 1600–1.[787] By Easter 1601, however, he had started on his fourth tour, and appeared once more at Frankfort, possibly in Kyd’s Spanish Tragedy. With him were Robert Kingmann and Robert Ledbetter, and they were expecting to be joined by ‘Johannen Buscheten und noch andere in unsere Companie gehörige Comödianten’. The old association of 1592 between Robert Browne and Thomas Sackville was, therefore, still in some sense alive.[788]

Meanwhile, Maurice of Hesse had not been wholly without English actors, since Browne and his fellows left Cassel in 1598. It would seem that George Webster returned from Heidelberg, or perhaps from Strassburg, to his service. The ‘fürstlich-hessischen Komödianten und Musikanten’ were at Frankfort in March, at Nuremberg in April 1600, and at Frankfort again at Easter 1601. The names recorded are those of George Webster, John Hill or Hüll, Richard Machin, and at Nuremberg Bernhardt Sandt.[789] Upon his second visit to Frankfort Webster would have met his old leader, now become his rival, Robert Browne. The Hessian company were for a third time at Frankfort in the autumn of 1601.[790] In the following year they left the Landgrave’s service, not altogether to the regret of some of his subjects, who resented a patronage of foreign arts at the cost of their pockets.[791] Webster and Machin, with whom was then one Ralph Reeve, were still using their former master’s name when they visited Frankfort at Easter 1603.[792] Thereafter they dropped it. Of Webster no more is heard. Machin is conjectured to have joined for a short time an English company in the service of Margrave Christian William, a younger son of the Elector Joachim Frederick of Brandenburg, which came to Frankfort for the Easter and autumn fairs of 1604.[793] The Margrave was administrator of the diocese of Magdeburg, and kept his Court at Halle. His company is traceable from 1604 to 1605, but I do not find any evidence of Machin’s connexion with it. In May 1605 he appeared at Strassburg, and there claimed as his credentials only his four years’ service with Maurice of Hesse.[794] Shortly before, he had been at the Frankfort Easter fair with Reeve, and the two returned to Frankfort in the autumn, and again at Easter 1606.[795]

Robert Browne, for some years after the opening of his fourth tour at Frankfort in the spring of 1601, does not appear to have attached himself to any particular Court. He is found at Frankfort, with Robert Jones, in September 1602, at Augsburg in the following November and December, at Nuremberg in February 1603, and at Frankfort for the Easter fair of the same year.[796] With him were then, but it would seem only temporarily, Thomas Blackwood and John Thare, late of Worcester’s men, who had doubtless just come out from England, when Elizabeth’s illness and death closed the London theatres.[797] He is probably the ‘alte Komödiant’, whose identity seems to have been thought sufficiently described by that term at Frankfort in the autumn of 1604.[798] He returned to Frankfort on 26 May 1606, and was at Strassburg in the following June and July.[799] Here he was accompanied by John Green. On this or some other visit to Strassburg, the company probably lost Robert Kingman, who, like Thomas Sackville, found business more profitable than strolling. He became a freeman of Strassburg in 1618, and in that year was able to befriend his old ‘fellow’ Browne, and in 1626 other actors on their visits to the city.[800] In the course of 1606 Browne seems to have entered the service of Maurice of Hesse, who in the previous year had built a permanent theatre, the Ottonium, at Cassel, and had now again an English company for the first time since 1602. This is to be inferred from an application for leave to play submitted to the Frankfort town council on 26 August 1606, and signed by ‘Robert Braun’, ‘Johann Grün’, and ‘Robert Ledbetter’ as ‘Fürstlich Hessische Comödianten’. Earlier in August the same men had been at Ulm.[801] They visited Nuremberg with a letter of recommendation from their lord in November, and then settled down at Cassel for the winter.[802] But their service did not last long. On 1 March 1607 a household officer wrote to the Landgrave that the English found their salaries inadequate, and after performing the comedy of The King of England and Scotland had declared, either in jest or earnest, that it was their last play in Cassel.[803] Probably they were in earnest. Browne and Green went to Frankfort, for the last time as the Hessian comedians, on 17 March.[804] Browne’s name now disappears from German records for a decade. In 1610 he was a member of the Queen’s Revels syndicate in London, and on 11 April 1612 he wrote a letter to Edward Alleyn from Clerkenwell.[805] But whether Browne left them or not, the company held together for a while longer. Green was at Danzig and Elbing in the course of 1607.[806] Thereafter it seems probable that he tried a bold flight, and penetrated to the heart of Catholic Germany in Austria. In November 1607 an English company was with the archducal court of Ferdinand and Maria Anna at Gräz in Styria. A performance by them of The King of England and the Goldsmith’s Wife is recorded.[807] They followed Ferdinand to Passau, where they gave The Prodigal Son and The Jew, and possibly also to the Reichstag held in January 1608 at Regensburg. By 6 February they were back at Gräz, and a letter from Ferdinand’s sister, the Archduchess Maria Magdalena, then just betrothed to the Grand Duke Cosimo II of Florence, gives a lively account of their performances and of the assistance which they rendered in the revels danced at Court.[808] Their repertory included The Prodigal Son, A Proud Woman of Antwerp, Dr. Faustus, A Duke of Florence and a Nobleman’s Daughter, Nobody and Somebody, Fortunatus, The Jew, King Louis and King Frederick of Hungary, A King of Cyprus and a Duke of Venice, Dives and Lazarus.[809] It is not absolutely certain that the company referred to in these notices was Green’s. No name is in fact mentioned. But the probability suggested by the resemblance of the above play-list to those of 1620 and 1626, with which Green was certainly connected, is confirmed by the existence of a German manuscript of Nobody and Somebody with a dedication by Green to Ferdinand’s brother the Archduke Maximilian, who was certainly present at the Gräz performances, and by a letter which tells us that a company visiting Austria in 1617 was the same as that which had played at Gräz in the lifetime of the Archduchess Maria, who died in 1608. Unfortunately the identification of this company of 1617 with Green’s is itself a matter of high probability, rather than of absolute certainty.[810] The end of the visit to Gräz was marked by a duel in which one of the English actors, ‘the man with long red hair, who always played a little fiddle’, killed a Frenchman.[811] Green now, like Browne, drops for some years out of the German records.

The Court functions at Cassel surrendered by Browne in 1607 were resumed by his predecessors, in whose leadership Reeve had now succeeded Machin; and the appearance of the Hessian company is recorded at Frankfort during both the fairs of 1608 and 1609, the Easter fair of 1610, the autumn fair of 1612, and the Easter fair of 1613. A proposed appearance for the coronation of the Emperor Mathias in June 1612 was prohibited, because the mourning for his predecessor Rudolph II was not yet over.[812] It is perhaps something of an assumption that the company was the same one throughout all these years. Reeve was in charge up to the autumn of 1609; after that no individual name is mentioned. The intervals between the fairs were presumably spent in the main at Cassel. In the summer of 1609 the company visited Stuttgart and Nuremberg and possibly other places, with a letter of recommendation from their lord.[813] In the autumn of the same year John Sigismund, Elector of Brandenburg (1608–19), who often entertained a company of his own, but appears to have been temporarily without one, wrote to Maurice to borrow them for the wedding of his brother at Berlin.[814] In April 1610 they may not improbably, though there is no evidence of the fact, have followed Maurice to the Diet at Prague.[815] In 1611 they are said to have been at Darmstadt.[816] They certainly played at the wedding of the Margrave Joachim Ernest, uncle of the Elector of Brandenburg, at Anspach in October 1612, and later in the same month paid a visit to Nuremberg.[817] No more is heard of them, or of any other English actors in the service of Maurice of Hesse-Cassel, after 1613.[818] Reeve was a member of Rosseter’s syndicate for the building of the Porter’s Hall theatre at Blackfriars in 1615, and with him were associated Philip Kingman and Robert Jones, the last notices of whom in Germany are as ‘fellows’ of Robert Browne in 1596 and 1602 respectively.

The appearance of Blackwood and Thare, late of Worcester’s men, in company with Browne at the Frankfort Easter fair of 1603, has already been noted. The only further record of either of them is of Thare at Ulm and Augsburg in the following December.[819] But by a series of conjectures, to which I hesitate to subscribe, they have been identified with a company which came to Stuttgart in September 1603 in the train of Lord Spencer and Sir William Dethick, ambassadors from England carrying the insignia of the Garter to Frederick Duke of Württemberg, and there gave a play of Susanna[820]; with a company which visited Nördlingen and other places in January 1604 under the leadership of one Eichelin, apparently a German, but with a repertory which included a Romeo and Juliet and a Pyramus and Thisbe[821]; with a company which held letters of recommendation from the Duke of Würtemberg at Nuremberg in February 1604;[822] and with a company which took a repertory closely resembling the Nördlingen one to Rothenburg in 1604 and 1606.[823] This is all very ingenious guesswork.[824]

All trace of John Green is lost for several years after 1608. An isolated notice at Utrecht in November 1613 suggests that he may have spent part of this interval in the Netherlands.[825] A year or two later he returned to Germany. He was at Danzig in July 1615 and again, with Robert Reinolds, late of Queen Anne’s men, in July 1616, having paid an intermediate visit to Copenhagen.[826] In 1617 he was at Prague for the coronation of the Archduke Ferdinand as King of Bohemia, and in July of the same year at Vienna.[827] The comparative infrequency with which English actors visited Austrian territory perhaps justifies the assumption that his is the company mentioned in a letter of recommendation sent by Ferdinand’s brother, the Archduke Charles, at Neiss to the Bishop of Olmütz on 18 March 1617, as having played at Gräz before his mother the Archduchess Maria, who died in 1608, and having recently spent some months at the Court of Poland in Warsaw.[828] In 1618 Green’s old leader, the indefatigable veteran Robert Browne, came out with a new company on his fifth and last visit to the Continent. He is first noted at Nuremberg on 28 May.[829] My impression is that the two men joined forces. Green’s name does not appear in the records for a couple of years. But Reinolds, who had been with him at Danzig in 1616, was with Browne at Strassburg in June and July 1618.[830] Later in the year Browne was at the autumn fair at Frankfort.[831] There is no definite mention of him during the next twelve months, but it is not improbable that the combined company was that which visited Rostock in May and Danzig in July 1619.[832] At any rate Browne appeared at Cologne in October;[833] and then went for the winter to Prague, where the Elector Palatine and the Lady Elizabeth of England, now King and Queen of Bohemia, had set up their Court.[834] They were but a winter King and Queen. In 1620 the Thirty Years’ War broke out, and Germany had other things to think of than English mumming. Browne was at Nuremberg in February and at Frankfort for the Easter fair.[835] That is the last we hear of him. But Green reached Cologne and Utrecht later in April, and was probably discreetly taking the company home.[836] In 1626 he came out again with Robert Reinolds, who made a reputation as a clown under the name of Pickleherring.[837] The details of this later tour lie beyond the scope of the present inquiry. Pickleherring is the clown-name also in a volume of Engelische Comedien und Tragedien, printed in 1620, which probably represents an attempt of Browne and Green to turn to profit with the printers their repertory of 1618–20, now rendered useless by their return to England.[838] The plays contained in this volume, in addition to two farces and five jigs, in most of which Pickleherring appears, are Esther and Haman, The Prodigal Son, Fortunatus, A King’s Son of England and a King’s Daughter of Scotland, Nobody and Somebody, Sidonia and Theagenes, Julio and Hyppolita, and Titus Andronicus.[839] The first five of these reappear in a list of plays forming the repertory of Green at Dresden during the visit of 1626 referred to above. If the titles can be trusted, two of the plays in this list had already been played by Browne at Frankfort and Cassel in 1601 and 1607, three by an unknown company, possibly that of Blackwood and Thare, at Nördlingen and Rothenburg in 1604 and 1606, and eight by Green himself at Passau and Gräz in the winter of 1607–8.[840] They number thirty in all, as follows: Christabella, Romeo and Juliet,[841] Amphitryo,[842] The Duke of Florence,[843] The King of Spain and the Portuguese Viceroy,[844] Julius Caesar, Crysella,[845] The Duke of Ferrara,[846] Nobody and Somebody,[847] The Kings of Denmark and Sweden,[848] Hamlet,[849] Orlando Furioso,[850] The Kings of England and Scotland,[851] Hieronymo the Spanish Marshal,[852] Haman and Esther,[853] The Martyr Dorothea,[854] Doctor Faustus,[855] The King of Arragon,[856] Fortunatus,[857] Joseph the Jew of Venice,[858] The Clever Thief,[859] The Duke of Venice,[860] Barabbas Jew of Malta, The Dukes of Mantua and Verona, Old Proculus, Lear King of England, The Godfather, The Prodigal Son,[861] The Count of Angiers, The Rich Man.[862]

The lists of 1620 and 1626 do not bear out Fleay’s assumption that the repertories they represent were wholly made up of plays taken out by Browne in 1592.[863]

Another member of Browne’s last expedition can perhaps be identified. With him in 1592 had been Richard Jones, who afterwards became one of the Admiral’s men in 1594 and left that company in 1602. He was again associated with Browne in Rosseter’s Queen’s Revels syndicate of 1610. The following undated letter to Edward Alleyn is preserved at Dulwich:[864]

M^r Allen, I commend my love and humble duty to you, geving you thankes for your great bounty bestoed vpon me in my sicknes, when I was in great want, God blese you for it, Sir, this it is, I am to go over beyond the seeas with M^r 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. Now good Sir, as you have ever byne my worthie frend, so healp me nowe. I have a sut of clothes and a cloke at pane for three pound, and if it shall pleas you to lend me so much to release them I shalbe bound to pray for you so longe as I leve, for if I go over and have no clothes, I shall not be esteemed of, and by godes help the first mony that I gett I will send it over vnto you, for hear I get nothinge, some tymes I have a shillinge a day, and some tymes nothinge, so that I leve in great poverty hear, and so I humbly take my leave, prainge to god I and my wiffe for your health and mistris Allenes, which god continew,

Your poor frend to command Richard Jones.

[Endorsed] Receved of master Allen the of February the somme of [and by Alleyn] M^r Jones his letter wher on I lent hym 3^l.

This has generally been dated 1592. But Alleyn’s first recorded marriage was in October of that year, and the reference to Browne as not going with the company has always been a puzzle. I suspect that it was written in or near 1615, and that Jones was one of the actors who started in advance of Browne under John Green. That he did travel about this time is shown by two other letters to Alleyn about a lease of the Leopard’s Head in Shoreditch held by his wife.[865] The first, from Jones himself, is not dated, but a mention of Henslowe shows that it was written before the latter’s death on 6 January 1616, or at least before Jones had heard of that event. The writer and his wife were then out of England. The second, from Harris Jones, was written from Danzig on 1 April 1620. Mrs. Jones was then expecting to join her husband, who was with ‘the prince’, whoever this may have been. If Jones had travelled with Browne’s men, he cut himself adrift from them on their return, for in 1622 he entered as a musician the service of Philip Julius, Duke of Wolgast in Pomerania (1592–1625), who had twice visited England, and whose presence at more than one London theatre is recorded in 1602.[866] Two petitions from Jones are in the Stettin archives.[867] On 30 August 1623 he asked permission, with his fellows Johan Kostrassen and Robert Dulandt (Dowland?), to return from Wolgast to England. Behind them they appear to have left Richard Farnaby, son of the better-known composer Giles Farnaby.[868] On 10 July 1624 Jones wrote to the Duke that his hopes of profitable employment under the Prince in England had been disappointed, and asked to be taken back into his service.

All the groups of actors hitherto dealt with seem to have had their origin, more or less directly, in the untiring initiative of Robert Browne. There is, however, another tradition, almost as closely associated with the houses of Brandenburg and Saxony, as the former with those of Hesse-Cassel and Brunswick. Some give and take between Cassel and the Courts of some of the Brandenburg princes has from time to time been noted.[869] But Berlin, where the successive Electors of Brandenburg, Joachim Frederick (1598–1608) and John Sigismund (1608–9), had their capital, was during a long period of years the head-quarters from which an Englishman, John Spencer, undertook extensive travels, both in Protestant and in Catholic Germany. Of Spencer’s stage-career in London, if he ever had one, nothing is known. Possibly he betook himself to the Brandenburg Court during the English plague-year of 1603. At any rate, comedians holding a recommendation given by the Elector on 10 August 1604 and confirmed by the Stadtholder of the Netherlands, Maurice Prince of Orange Nassau, in the following December, were at Leyden in January and The Hague in May 1605.[870] It is reasonable to identify them with the company under John Spencer, who received a recommendation from the Electress Eleonora of Brandenburg to the Elector Christian II of Saxony (1591–1611) in the same year.[871] At Dresden they possibly remained for some time, for although there are several anonymous appearances, including the famous ones at Gräz in the winter of 1607–8, which can be conjecturally assigned to them,[872] they do not clearly emerge until April 1608, when a visit of the Electoral players of Saxony is recorded at Cologne.[873] Subsequently they waited upon Francis, Duke of Stettin and by him were recommended to the new Elector of Brandenburg, John Sigismund, who passed them on once more to the Elector of Saxony on 14 July 1609.[874] Being in need of comedians for his brother’s wedding in the same year, he applied, as has been noted, for a loan of those of Maurice of Hesse.[875] Dresden remained the head-quarters of Spencer’s men again during the next two years, but in 1611 they were back in John Sigismund’s service. Christian II of Saxony died in this year. In July and August they visited Danzig and Königsberg, and in October and November they attended the Elector to Ortelsburg and Königsberg for the ceremonies in connexion with the acknowledgement of him as heir to his father-in-law, Duke Albert Frederick of Prussia. On this occasion Spencer was at the head of not less than nineteen actors and sixteen musicians, and produced an elaborate Turkish ‘Triumph-comedy’.[876] In April 1613 Spencer left Berlin on a tour which was to take him to Dresden once more.[877] The company were at Nuremberg in June, still using the name of the Elector of Brandenburg and playing Philole and Mariana, Celinde and Sedea, The Fall of Troy, The Fall of Constantinople, and The Turk.[878] In July and August they were at Augsburg, and in September they returned to Nuremberg, now describing themselves as the Elector of Saxony’s company.[879] This Elector was John George I (1611–56), the third of his house to entertain an English company. In October they played The Fall of Constantinople at the Reichstag held by the Emperor Mathias at Regensburg. Spencer was their leader, but they no longer claimed any courtly status.[880] After an unsuccessful attempt to pay a third visit for the year to Nuremberg, they went to Rothenburg, and so to Heidelberg, whither the Elector Palatine Frederick V had just brought his English bride. Here they spent the winter, and left to attend the Frankfort fair of Easter 1614.[881] In May their service with the Elector of Brandenburg, although now none of the most recent, helped them to get a footing in Strassburg, where they stayed until July and again played The Fall of Constantinople, as well as a play of Government.[882] In August they were at Augsburg and possibly Ulm.[883] In October they projected a return visit to Strassburg, but were rejected, ‘so dies Jar hie lang genug super multorum opinionem gewessen’.[884] Possibly they fell back upon Stuttgart.[885] In February 1615 they were in Cologne, and here a queer thing happened. The whole company, with Spencer’s wife and children, was converted to Catholicism by the eloquence of a Franciscan friar. The event is recorded in the town archives and also in a manuscript Franciscan chronicle preserved in the British Museum:[886]

‘Twentie fowre stage players arrive out of Ingland at Collen: all Inglish except one Germanian and one Dutchman. All Protestants. Betwixt those and father Francis Nugent disputation was begunne and protracted for the space of 7 or eight dayes consecutively; all of them meeting at one place together. The chiefe among them was one N. Spencer, a proper sufficient man. In fine, all and each of them beeing clearlie convinced, they yielded to the truth; but felt themselves so drie and roughharted that they knew not how to pass from the bewitching Babylonian harlot to their true mother the Catholic church, that always pure and virginal spouse of the lamb.’

It need hardly be said that in so Catholic a city as Cologne this singular act of grace gave the performances of the English comedians an extraordinary vogue. In June and July 1615 Spencer was at Strassburg, in company with one Christopher Apileutter, who may have been the Germanian or the Dutchman of the Cologne notice.[887] He attended the autumn fair at Frankfort, using an imperial patent, perhaps given him at Regensburg in 1613.[888] During the winter of 1615–16 he was again in Cologne, still profiting by his conversion.[889] This, however, had not made of him such a bigot, as to be unable to render acceptable duty in the Protestant courts where his earliest successes had been won. For a year his movements became obscure. But in August 1617 he was playing before the Elector of Saxony and the Emperor Matthias at Dresden.[890] And in the following year he once more entered the Brandenburg service. During the interval which had elapsed since 1613, John Sigismund had entertained another company. Early in 1614 he engaged William, Abraham, and Jacob Pedel, Robert Arzschar, Behrendt Holzhew, and August Pflugbeil.[891] The names hardly sound English; but Jacob Pedel is probably the Jacob Behel or Biel who was travelling with Sackville in 1597, William Pedel appeared as an English pantomimist at Leyden in November 1608, and Arzschar, whose correct name was doubtless Archer, is also described as an Englishman at Frankfort in the autumn of 1608.[892] He was then in company with Heinrich Greum and Rudolph Beart. A Burchart Bierdt appeared as ‘Englischer Musicant’ at Cologne in December 1612.[893] Archer perhaps came from Nuremberg. He was at Frankfort again in the autumn of 1610, and at the Reichstag held by the Emperor Matthias at Regensburg in September 1613.[894] It must have been this new company under Archer which visited Wolfenbüttel in September 1614 and Danzig in 1615, styling themselves the Brandenburg comedians.[895] The only names given at Danzig are Johann Friedrich Virnius and Bartholomeus Freyerbott, and in fact the Pedels, Holzhew, and Pflugbeil left Berlin at Easter 1615. Archer himself remained with the Elector until May 1616. The field, then, was clear at Berlin for the enterprise of Spencer. On 17 March 1618 John Sigismund made a payment ‘to one Stockfisch’ for bringing the English comedians from Elbing. Further payments to the English are recorded in the following November, and in June 1619 for plays at Königsberg and Balge in Prussia, of which the Elector had become Duke on the death of his father-in-law Albert Frederick in the preceding August.[896] In July 1619 the Elector of Brandenburg’s comedians are heard of at Danzig.[897] On 23 December 1619 John Sigismund himself died, and in 1620 Hans Stockfisch addressed an appeal for certain arrears of salary to Count Adam von Schwartzenberg, an officer at the court of the new Elector George William (1619–40), in which he claimed to have enjoyed the Count’s protection for more than fifteen years. In reply George William describes the petitioner as ‘den Englischen Junkher Hans Stockfisch, wie er sich nennet’.[898] There can be little doubt that Hans Stockfisch was none other than John Spencer, for the period of fifteen years precisely takes us back to his first appearance as a Brandenburg comedian in 1605. His fish name corresponds to, and was perhaps motived by, that of Pickleherring adopted by Robert Reinolds of the chief rival English company about the same date. Both had their prototype in Sackville’s John Bouset.[899] The Elector George William was no friend to actors, and to Spencer, as to others, the Thirty Years’ War closed many doors. In February 1623 he came to Nuremberg with Sebastian Schadleutner, but was not allowed to play.[900] And that is the last that is heard of him.

A few isolated records indicate the presence from time to time in northern Europe of players not yet mentioned, and not obviously connected either with the Browne or with the Spencer tradition. An English company under Peter de Prun of Brussels visited Nuremberg in April 1594. The name of the leader does not sound very English, and a company, not improbably the same, is described as ‘niederländische’ at Ulm in the following August. Heywood, however, speaks of an English company as in the pay of the Cardinal and Archduke Albert, Governor of the Spanish Netherlands, about 1608.[901] Maurice of Orange-Nassau, Stadtholder of the Dutch Netherlands (1584–1625), who gave a recommendation to Spencer in 1605, had also an English company of his own, which visited Frankfort at Easter 1611, and then claimed to be strange in Germany.[902] To Augsburg in June 1602 came Fabian Penton and his company;[903] to Leyden in September 1604 John Woods and his company,[904] and to Leipzig in April 1613 Hans Leberwurst with his boys.[905] Of none of these is anything further known, nor of William Alexander Blank, a Scottish dancer, who performed at Cologne in April 1605.[906]

Traces of English players in southern Europe are few and far between. That Kempe’s travels of 1601 took him to Italy has already been noted.[907] There were some English acrobats at Madrid in January 1583.[908] On 25 May 1598 the Confrères de la Passion leased their theatre in Paris, the Hôtel de Bourgogne, to ‘Jehan Sehais comédien Anglois’, and on 4 June obtained judgement in the court of the Châtelet, ‘tant pour raison du susdit bail que pour le droit d’un écu par jour, jouant lesdits Anglais ailleurs qu’audit Hôtel’.[909] I do not know whether I am justified in finding under the French disguise of ‘Jehan Sehais’ the name of one John Shaa or Shaw, conceivably related to Robert Shaw of the Admiral’s men, who witnessed an advance by Henslowe to Dekker on 24 November 1599.[910] In 1604 another English company was in France, and gave a performance on 18 September in the great hall at Fontainebleau, the effect of which upon the imagination of the future Louis XIV, then a child of four, is minutely described in the singular diary of his tutor and physician, Jean Héroard.[911]

‘Mené en la grande salle neuve ouïr une tragédie représentée par des Anglois; il les écoute avec froideur, gravité et patience jusques à ce qu’il fallut couper la tête à un des personnages.’

On 28 September, Louis was playing at being an actor, and on 29 September, says Héroard:

‘Il dit qu’il veut jouer la comédie; “Monsieur,” dis-je, “comment direz-vous?” Il repond, “Tiph, toph,” en grossissant sa voix. À six heures et demie, soupé; il va en sa chambre, se fait habiller pour masquer, et dit: “Allons voir maman, nous sommes des comédiens.”’

Finally, on 3 October:

‘Il dit, “Habillons-nous en comédiens,” on lui met son tablier coiffé sur la tête; il se prend à parler, disant: “Tiph, toph, milord” et marchant à grands pas.’

It has been suggested on rather inadequate grounds that the play seen by Louis may have been 2 Henry IV. Possibly the princely imagination had merely been smitten by some comic rough and tumble.[912] But it is also conceivable that the theme may have been the execution of John Tiptoft, Earl of Worcester, at the restoration of Henry VI in 1470.[913]

It would be rash to assume that these records of 1598 and 1604 represent all the visits of English actors to France during the Elizabethan period; and it is not improbable that a search in the municipal archives of Picardy and Normandy, as thorough as that which has been carried out for Germany, might yield notable results. Some general evidence that tours in France did take place can be cited. John Green, dedicating his version of Nobody and Somebody to the Archduke Maximilian about 1608, says that he had been in that country.[914] His, indeed, so far as dates go, might have been the company of 1604. And France, no less than Germany, is referred to as scoured by the English comedians about 1613.[915]

XV ACTORS

[Bibliographical Note.—I include a few managers who were not necessarily themselves actors. The earlier studies of stage biography were mainly concerned with the Chamberlain’s and King’s men in the list of ‘The Names of the Principall Actors in all these Playes’, prefixed to the Shakespearian F₁ of 1623. The statements about them in [J. Roberts] Answer to Mr. Pope’s Preface to Shakespeare (1729) are conjectural and not, as sometimes supposed, traditional. A good deal was collected from wills and registers by E. Malone (Variorum, iii. 182), G. Chalmers (ibid. iii. 464), and J. P. Collier, Memoirs of the Principal Actors in the Plays of Shakespeare (1846, Sh. Soc. revised edition in H. E. D. P. iii. 255), and is summarized by K. Elze, William Shakespeare (tr. 1888), 246. New ground was broken by F. G. Fleay, On the Actor Lists, 1578–1642 (R. Hist. Soc. Trans. ix. 44), and in the list in Chronicle History of the London Stage (1890), 370. Here he criticizes Collier’s claim to have a list of 500 actors, as he cannot find ‘that any list at all was found among his papers’, and suggests that a forgery was planned. I am glad to have an opportunity for once of defending Collier, even if it is only against Fleay. The fifth report (1846) of the Sh. Soc. shows that ‘a volume of the original actors in plays by writers other than Shakespeare was in preparation, and Bodl. MS. 29445 contains a number of rough extracts made by Collier and P. Cunningham from London parochial registers, with a digest of these and other material, entitled ‘Old Actors. Collections for the Biography of, derived from Old Books & MSS. Alphabetically arranged’. I have used this manuscript and cite it as ‘Bodl.’ or ‘B.’. The information is mainly from the registers of St. Saviour’s, Southwark, St. Andrew’s Wardrobe, St. Anne’s, Blackfriars, St. Leonard’s, Shoreditch, St. Giles’, Cripplegate, and other churches. It appears to be reliable, except perhaps in one or two points. One would, of course, prefer to have the registers themselves in print, but with the exception of those of St. James’s, Clerkenwell (Harl. Soc.), and A. W. C. Hallen’s Registers of St. Botolph’s, Bishopsgate, the published London Registers, as shown by A. M. Burke, Key to the Ancient Parish Registers of England and Wales (1908), are precisely those of least theatrical interest. The Southwark registers in particular, and the other records of that parish, including the ‘token-books’ or annual lists, street by street, of communicants, ought to be made available. Some notes from them are in W. Rendle, Bankside (1877, Harrison, Part ii). Southwark marriages (1605–25) are in Genealogist (n. s. vi-ix). In these records ‘man’ clearly means ‘player’. Extracts from other registers may be found in parochial histories and elsewhere. Some from St. Giles’s, Cripplegate, are in J. P. Malcolm, Londinium Redivivum (1802–7), iii. 303, J. J. Baddeley, St. Giles, Cripplegate (1888), and W. Hunter’s Addl. MS. 24589. C. C. Stopes, Burbage, 139, gives a full collection from St. Leonard’s, Shoreditch. An interesting list of actors and their addresses c. 1623 is in C. W. Wallace, Gervase Markham, Dramatist (1910, Sh.-Jahrbuch, xlvi. 345), cited as ‘J’. The citations ‘H’ and ‘H. P’ are from Greg’s editions of Henslowe’s Diary and Henslowe Papers.]

ABYNGDON, HENRY. Master of Chapel, 1455–78.

ADAMS, JOHN. Sussex’s, 1576; Queen’s, 1583, 1588. He possibly played the clown Adam in A Looking Glass and Oberon in James IV.. It would hardly be justifiable to conjecture that he lived to join Hunsdon’s and play Adam in A. Y. L.

ALDERSON, WILLIAM. Chapel, 1509–13.

ALLEYN, EDWARD, was born on 1 September 1566 in the parish of St. Botolph, Bishopsgate.[916] His father was Edward Alleyn of Willen, Bucks, Innholder and porter to the Queen, who died in 1570; his mother, Margaret Townley, for whom he claimed a descent from the Townleys of Lancashire which modern genealogists hesitate to credit, re-married with one John Browne, a haberdasher, between whom and other Brownes who appear in theatrical annals no connexion can be proved. Edward Alleyn is said by Fuller in his Worthies to have been ‘bred a stage player’. In formal deeds he is generally described as ‘yeoman’ or ‘gentleman’, and once, in 1595, as ‘musician’.[917] In January 1583 he was one of Worcester’s players; at some later date he joined the Admiral’s men, and had as ‘fellow’ his brother John, with whom during 1589–91 he was associated in purchases of apparel. On 22 October 1592 he married Joan Woodward, step-daughter of Philip Henslowe, with whom he appears ever after in the closest business relations. A Dulwich tradition that he was already a widower probably rests on a mention of ‘Mistris Allene’ in an undated letter about a German tour by Richard Jones, which is commonly assigned to February 1592, but is more probably of later date.[918] Alleyn is specifically described as the Admiral’s servant in the Privy Council letter of assistance to Strange’s men (q.v.), with whom he travelled during the plague of 1593. Some of the letters passing between him and his wife and father-in-law during this tour are preserved at Dulwich, and are full of interesting domestic details about his white waistcoat and his orange tawny woollen stockings, the pasturing of his horse, his spinach bed, and the furnishing of his house.[919] His ‘tenants’ are mentioned and his ‘sister Phillipes & her husband’. He had by this time a high reputation as an actor, as witnessed by Nashe in his Pierce Penilesse of 1592, where he classes him with Tarlton, Knell, and Bentley, and says, ‘Not Roscius nor Aesope, those admyred tragedians that haue liued euer since before Christ was borne, could euer performe more in action than famous Ned Allen’; and in his Strange Newes of the same year, where he says of Edmund Spenser that ‘his very name (as that of Ned Allen on the common stage) was able to make an ill matter good’.[920] An undated letter at Dulwich, written to him by an admirer who signs himself W. P., offers a wager in which ‘Peele’s credit’ was also in some way concerned, and in which Alleyn was to have the choice of any one of Bentley’s or Knell’s plays, and promises that, even if he loses, ‘we must and will saie Ned Allen still’.[921] In 1594 The Knack to know a Knave is ascribed, quite exceptionally, on its title-page, not to the servants of a particular lord, but to ‘Ed. Allen and his Companie’. From 1594 to 1597 Alleyn was one of the Admiral’s men (q.v.) at the Rose. He then ‘leafte playnge’, but resumed at the request of the Queen, although apparently without becoming a full sharer of the company, when the Fortune (q.v.), which he had built for them, was opened in the autumn of 1600. He became a servant of Prince Henry with the rest of his fellows in 1604, and at the coronation procession on 15 March appeared as the Genius of the City and delivered a ‘gratulatory speech’ to James ‘with excellent action and a well-tun’de, audible voyce’.[922] Further testimonies to his talent are rendered by John Weever;[923] by Ben Jonson, Epigram lxxxix (1616), who equals him to Aesop and Roscius, and himself to Cicero, who praised them; by Heywood, who says, ‘Among so many dead let me not forget one yet alive, in his time the most worthy, famous Maister Edward Allen’;[924] and by Fuller, who says, ‘He was the Roscius of our age, so acting to the life that he made any part (especially a majestic one) to become him.’[925] Of his parts are recorded Faustus,[926] Tamburlaine, Barabas in The Jew of Malta,[927] and Cutlack in a play of that name revived by the Admiral’s men in 1594 and now lost,[928] while that of Orlando in Greene’s Orlando Furioso is amongst the papers at Dulwich.[929] Heywood, writing about 1608, speaks of Alleyn’s playing in the past. He probably retired finally soon after the beginning of the new reign. In 1605 he valued his ‘share of aparell’ at £100; but his name is not in the patent to the Prince’s men of 30 April 1606, although as late as 1611 he still retained his personal rank as servant to the prince. It is difficult to give much credit to the legend that his withdrawal was due to remorse, or, as one version has it, to an apparition of the devil when he was playing Faustus.[930] Certainly he continued to hold an interest in the Fortune, and conceivably in the Red Bull (q.v.) also. And certainly remorse did not prevent him from continuing to exercise the functions of Master of the Game of Paris Garden, a post which he acquired jointly with Henslowe in 1604, having already been interested in the Bear-garden itself since 1594. At this after it became the Hope (q.v.) he was still about 1617 entertaining players. But the time of his retirement synchronizes with the first beginnings of his foundation of a school and hospital by the name of the College of God’s Gift at Dulwich. By 1605 he was a wealthy man, with income from substantial investments in leasehold property as well as the profits from his enterprises, and on 25 October he took the first step in the purchase of the manor of Dulwich, which was completed by 1614 at a total cost of nearly £10,000. Here about 1613 he made his residence, moving from Southwark, where he had been churchwarden of St. Saviour’s in 1610. In 1613 also he began the building of the college, which was opened in 1617. Alleyn himself acted as manager and was in a position to spend upon the college and his own household some £1,700 a year. The endowment of the college included, besides house property in London, the freehold of the Fortune. Henslowe had died in January 1616 and his widow in the following year, and his papers passed to Alleyn and remain at Dulwich. Here, too, is Alleyn’s own diary for 1617–22, and this and his correspondence show him as a friend of persons of honour, and the patron of writers and the members of his own former profession. Alleyn’s wife Joan died on 28 June 1623 and on the following 3 December he married Constance, daughter of John Donne, dean of St. Paul’s, settling on her £1,500. A letter of 23 July 1624 indicates that he was then desirous of obtaining ‘sum further dignetie’. He died on 25 November 1626.