Note 563 — BOOK V PLAYS AND PLAYWRIGHTS

The fee seems at first to have been 4d. for ‘entraunce’ (i. 94), with a further sum for books above a certain size at the rate of ‘euery iij leves a pannye’ (i. 97); plays ran from 4d. to 12d. But from about 1582 plays and most other books are charged a uniform fee of 6d., and only ballads and other trifles escape with 4d. Payments were sometimes in arrear; often there is no note of fee to a title; and in some of these cases the words ‘neuer printed’ have been added. On the other hand, the receipt of fees is sometimes recorded, and the title remains unentered; at the end of the entries for 1585–6 (ii. 448) is a memorandum that one of the wardens ‘brought in about iiijs moore which he had receved for copies yat were not brought to be entred into the book this yere’. A similar item is in the wardens’ accounts for 1592–3 (i. 559). Fees were charged for entries of transferred as well as of new copies.