A. Introduction

The present chapter contains detailed chronicles—too often, I fear, lapsing into arid annals of performances at Court or in the provinces—of all the companies traceable in London during any year between 1558 and 1616. The household and other establishments to which the companies were attached are taken as the basis of classification. This principle is open to criticism. Certainly it has not always the advantage of presenting economic units. It is improbable that there was any continuity as regards membership between the bodies of actors successively appearing, often after long intervals, under the names of Sussex or Hunsdon or Derby. On the other hand, particular associations of actors can sometimes be discerned as holding together under a change of patrons. Thus between 1571 and 1583 Laurence and John Dutton seem to have led a single company, which earned the nickname of the Chameleons, first in the service of Sir Robert Lane and then, turn by turn, in that of the Earls of Lincoln, Warwick, and Oxford. The real successors, again, of the Derby’s men of 1593 are less the Derby’s men of 1595–1618 than the Hunsdon’s men of 1594–1603, who in course of time became the King’s men without any breach of their unity as a trading association. Nevertheless, an arrangement under patrons is a practicable one, since companies nearly always appear under the names of their patrons in official documents, while an arrangement under trading associations is not. Actors are a restless folk, and the history of the Admiral’s men, or the Queen’s Revels, or the Lady Elizabeth’s men, will show how constantly their business organizations were disturbed by the coming and going of individuals, and by the breaking and reconstruction of the agreements on which they were based. It is but rarely that we have any clue to these intricacies; and I have therefore followed the households as the best available guides, indicating breaches of continuity and affiliations, where these appear to exist, and adopting as far as possible an order which, without pretence of being scientific, will bring each household under consideration roughly at the point at which its servants become of the greatest significance to the general history of the stage. The method may perhaps be described as that of a λαμπαδηφορία.

A study of the succession of the companies gives rise to a few general considerations. During the earlier years of Elizabeth’s reign the drama is under the domination of the boy companies. This may be in part due to the long-standing humanistic tradition of the Renaissance, although the lead is in fact taken not so much by schoolboys in the stricter sense, as by the trained musical establishments of the royal chapels and still more that of the St. Paul’s choir under Sebastian Westcott. More important points perhaps are, that the Gentlemen of the Chapel, who had been prominent under Henry VIII, had ceased to perform, that the royal Interluders had been allowed to decay, and that the other professional companies had not yet found a permanent economic basis in London, while their literary accomplishment was still upon a popular rather than a courtly level. Whatever the cause or causes, the fact is undeniable. Out of seventy-eight rewards for Court performances between 1558 and 1576, twenty-one went to the Paul’s boys, fifteen to the royal chapels, and ten to schoolboys, making a total of forty-six, as against only thirty-two paid to adult companies. And if the first half of this period only be taken, the disproportion is still greater, for by 1567 the Paul’s boys had received eleven rewards, other boys two, and the adult companies six. A complete reversal of this position coincides rather markedly with the building of the first permanent theatres in 1576. Between 1576 and 1583 the adult companies had thirty-nine rewards and the boys only seventeen. There is also a rapid growth in the number of companies. Before 1576 the Earl of Leicester’s men and the Duttons were alone conspicuous. After 1576 the entertainment of a London company seems to become a regular practice with those great officers the Lord Chamberlain and the Lord Admiral, as well as with special favourites of the Queen, such as the Earl of Leicester himself or the Earl of Oxford. Stockwood in 1578 speaks of ‘eighte ordinarie places’ in the City as occupied by the players. A Privy Council order of the same year limits the right to perform to six companies selected to take part in the Court festivities at Christmas, namely Leicester’s men, Warwick’s, Sussex’s, Essex’s, and the Children of the Chapel and St. Paul’s. Gabriel Harvey, writing to Edmund Spenser of the publication of his virelays in the following summer, says:

‘Ye have preiudished my good name for ever in thrustinge me thus on the stage to make tryall of my extemporall faculty, and to play Wylsons or Tarletons parte. I suppose thou wilt go nighe hande shortelye to sende my lorde of Lycesters or my lorde of Warwickes, Vawsis, or my lord Ritches players, or sum other freshe starteupp comedanties unto me for sum newe devised interlude, or sum maltconceivid comedye fitt for the Theater, or sum other paintid stage whereat thou and thy lively copesmates in London maye lawghe ther mouthes and bellyes full for pence or twoepence apeece.’

Doubtless many of this mushroom brood of ‘freshe starteupp comedanties’ never succeeded in making good their permanent footing in the metropolis. Lord Vaux’s men, whom Harvey mentions, were never fortunate enough to be summoned to Court; and the same may be said of Lord Arundel’s men, Lord Berkeley’s, and Lord Abergavenny’s. Such men, after their cast for fortune, had to drift away into the provinces, and pad the hoof on the hard roads once more.

The next septennial period, 1583–90, witnessed the extinction, for a decade or so, of the boy companies, in spite of the new impulse given to the latter by the activity as a playwright of John Lyly. Of forty-five Court payments made during these years, thirty apparently went to men and only fifteen to boys. This ultimate success of the professional organizations may largely have been due to their employment of such university wits as Marlowe, Peele, Greene, Lodge, and Nashe in the writing of plays, with which Lyly could be challenged on his own ground before the Court, while a sufficient supply of chronicle histories and other popular stuff could still be kept on the boards to tickle the ears of the groundlings. The undisputed pre-eminence lay during this period with the Queen’s men, who made within it no less than twenty-one appearances at Court. This company enjoyed the prestige of the royal livery, transferred to it from the now defunct Interluders, which had a ready effect in the unloosing of municipal pockets. And at its foundation in 1583 it incorporated, in addition to Tarlton, whose origin is unknown, the leading members of the pre-existing companies: Wilson and Laneham from Leicester’s, Adams from Sussex’s, and John Dutton from Oxford’s. The former fellows of these lucky ones were naturally hardly able to maintain their standing. In January 1587 Leicester’s, Oxford’s, and the Admiral’s were still setting up their bills side by side with those of the Queen’s. But the first two are not heard of at Court again, and even the Admiral’s were hardly able to make a show except by coalition with other companies. Thus we find the Admiral’s combining with Hunsdon’s in 1585, and with Strange’s perhaps from 1589 onwards, and it became the destiny of this last alliance, under the leadership of Edward Alleyn, to dispossess the Queen’s men, after the death of Tarlton in 1588, from their pride of place. The fall of the Queen’s men was sudden. In 1590–1 they gave four Court plays to two by their rivals; in 1591–2 they gave one, and their rivals six. In their turn they appear to have been reduced to forming a coalition with Lord Sussex’s men.

The plague-years of 1592–4 brought disaster, chaos, and change into the theatrical world. Only the briefest London seasons were possible. The necessities of travelling led to further combinations and recombinations of groups, one of which may have given rise to the ephemeral existence of Lord Pembroke’s men. And, by the time the public health was restored, the Queen’s had reconciled themselves to a provincial existence, and continued until 1603 to make their harvest of the royal name, as their predecessors in title had done, without returning to London at all. The combination of which Alleyn had been the centre broke up, and its component elements reconstituted themselves as the two great companies of the Chamberlain’s and the Admiral’s men. Between these there was a vigorous rivalry, which sometimes showed itself in lawsuits, sometimes in the more legitimate form of competing plays on similar themes. Thus a popular sentiment offended by the Chamberlain’s men in 1 Henry IV was at once appealed to by the Admiral’s with Sir John Oldcastle. And when the Admiral’s scored a success by their representation of forest life in Robin Hood, the Chamberlain’s were quickly ready to counter with As You Like It. I think the Chamberlain’s secured the better position of the two. They had their Burbadge to pit against the reputation of Alleyn; they had their honey-tongued Shakespeare; and they had a business organization which gave them a greater stability of membership than any company in the hands of Henslowe was likely to secure. If one may once more use the statistics of Court performances as a criterion, they are found to have appeared thirty-two times and their rivals only twenty times from 1594 to 1603. Between them the Chamberlain’s and the Admiral’s enjoyed for some years a practical monopoly of the London stage, which received an official recognition by the action of the Privy Council in 1597. But this state of things did not long continue. Ambitious companies, such as Pembroke’s, disregarded the directions of the Council. Derby’s men, Worcester’s, Hertford’s, one by one obtained at least a temporary footing at Court, and in 1602 the influence of the Earl of Oxford was strong enough to bring about the admission to a permanent home in London of a third company made up of his own and Worcester’s servants. Even more dangerous, perhaps, to the monopoly was the revival of the boy companies, Paul’s in 1599 and the Chapel in 1600. The imps not only took by their novelty in the eyes of a younger generation of play-goers. They began a warfare of satire, in which they ‘berattled the common stages’ with a vigour and dexterity that betray the malice of the poets against the players which had been a motive in their rehabilitation.

No material change took place at the coming of James. The three adult companies, the Chamberlain’s, the Admiral’s, Worcester’s, passed respectively under the patronage of James, Prince Henry, and Queen Anne. On the death of Prince Henry in 1612 his place was taken by the Elector Palatine. The Children of the Chapel also received the patronage of Queen Anne, as Children of the Queen’s Revels. The competition for popular favour continued severe. Dekker refers to it in 1608 and the preacher Crashaw in 1610. It is to be noticed, however, that Dekker speaks only of ‘a deadly war’ between ‘three houses’, presumably regarding the boy companies as negligible. And in fact these companies were on the wane. By 1609 the Queen’s Revels, though still in existence, had suffered from the wearing off of novelty, from the tendency of boys to grow older, from the plague-seasons of 1603–4 and 1608–9, which they were less well equipped than the better financed adults to withstand, from the indiscretions and quarrels of their managers, and from the loss of the Blackfriars, of which the King’s men had secured possession. The Paul’s boys had been bought off by the payment of a ‘dead rent’ or blackmail to the Master. A third company, the King’s Revels, had been started, but had failed to establish itself. The three houses were not, indeed, left with an undisputed field. Advantage was taken of the predilection of the younger members of the royal family for the drama, and patents were obtained, in 1610 for a Duke of York’s company, and in 1611 for a Lady Elizabeth’s company. These also had but a frail life. In 1613 the Lady Elizabeth’s and the Queen’s Revels coalesced under the dangerous wardenship of Henslowe. In 1615 the Duke of York’s, now Prince Charles’s, men joined the combination. And finally in 1616 the Prince’s men were left alone to make up the tale of four London companies, and the Lady Elizabeth’s and the Queen’s Revels disappeared into the provinces. The list of men summoned before the Privy Council in March 1615 to account for playing in Lent contains the names of the leaders of the four companies, the King’s, the Queen’s, the Palsgrave’s, and the Prince’s. The King’s played at the Globe and Blackfriars, the Queen’s at the Red Bull, whence they moved in 1617 to the Cockpit, the Palsgrave’s at the Fortune, and the Prince’s at the Hope. The supremacy of the King’s men during 1603–16 was undisputed. Of two hundred and ninety-nine plays rewarded at Court for that period, they gave one hundred and seventy-seven, the Prince’s men forty-seven, the Queen’s men twenty-eight, the Duke of York’s men twenty, the Lady Elizabeth’s men nine, the Queen’s Revels boys fifteen, and the Paul’s boys three. Their plays, moreover, were those usually selected for performance before James himself. It is possible, however, that the Red Bull and the Fortune were better able to hold their own against the Globe when it came to attracting a popular audience.