xii

Thomas Downton the 25 of Janewary 1599 ded hire as his couenante servante —— for ij yers to begyne at Shrofe Tewesday next & he to geue hime viijs a wecke as longe as they playe & after they lye stylle one fortnyght then to geue hime hallfe wages wittnes P H & Edward Browne & Charlles Masey.

The appearance of Jones as guarantee for Shaw is due to the fact that, as a result of The Isle of Dogs, the latter was languishing with Gabriel Spencer and Ben Jonson in the Marshalsea. Meanwhile some at least of the company travelled. Henslowe lent Alleyn 40s. for John Singer and Thomas Towne ‘when they went into the contrey’ and noted that this was ‘at ther last cominge’. There is another entry of a small loan to Singer on 9 August, so they cannot have started before that; and they must have been back by 6 October, when Singer witnessed the agreement with Thomas Downton. Possibly Edward Dutton and Richard Alleyn, who also borrowed money from Henslowe, went with them. The Privy Council warrants for the release of the prisoners in the Marshalsea were signed on 3 October, and a few days later Henslowe, more successful than Langley of the Swan in getting the licence for his house renewed, even before the formal expiration of the restraint on 1 November, was in a position to resume his play list with the heading, ‘The xj of Octobe begane my lord Admerals & my lorde of Penbrockes men to play at my howsse 1597’. The entries of plays are few and irregular up to 5 November, and then stop. A note is appended that on 26 November the Master of the Revels was paid for four weeks. The performances included one new play, Friar Spendleton, and five old ones, Jeronimo, The Comedy of Humours, Dr. Faustus, Hardicanute, and Bourbon, of which the last two do not belong to the 1594–7 repertory, and may have been contributed by Pembroke’s men. The diary also contains an account of weekly receipts running from 21 October 1597 to 4 March 1598, under the heading, ‘A juste a cownte of all suche monye as I haue receyed of my lord Admeralles & my lord of Penbrocke men as foloweth be gynynge the 21 of October 1597’, and some notes of individual advances and repayments, mainly through Robert Shaw and Thomas Downton, on behalf of the company, from 23 October to 12 December. In the course of these the company is again described on 23 October and 5 November as ‘the company of my lord Admeralles men & my lord Penbrockes’, but on 1 December as ‘the companey of my lord Admeralles men’; and the substance of the whole of these advances is set out again, without any reference to Pembroke’s men, at the beginning of a continuous account from 21 October onwards, which is headed, ‘A juste a cownt of all suche money as I haue layd owt for my lord Admeralles players begynyng the xj of October whose names ar as foloweth Borne Gabrell Shaw Jonnes Dowten Jube Towne Synger & the ij Geffes’. Nothing very certain is known of the previous career of Humphrey and Anthony Jeffes, but if the former is the ‘Humfrey’ who appears with ‘Gabriel’ [Spencer] in the stage-directions to 3 Henry VI it is most likely that these men also came from Pembroke’s.

The responsible members of the Admiral’s company at the beginning of the third period of their existence were, then, so far as their relations to Henslowe were concerned, Thomas Downton, Richard Jones, Edward Juby, Thomas Towne, John Singer, Robert Shaw, William Borne, who seems to have had the regular alias of William Bird, Gabriel Spencer, Humphrey Jeffes, and Anthony Jeffes. To these must probably be added a number of hired men, including Thomas Hearne, John Helle, William Kendall, Richard Alleyn, Thomas Heywood, and probably Charles Massey, Samuel Rowley, Thomas Hunt, and Stephen Maget the tireman, and of apprentices, including James Bristow and Pigge. Of the sharers Downton, Jones, Juby, Towne, and Singer had alone belonged to the earlier Admiral’s men. Slater’s departure involved the company in a lawsuit, the nature of which is not stated in the diary. Professor Wallace, however, has found an independent record of a Queen’s Bench action by Thomas Downton to recover £13 6s. 8d., the value of a playbook which Downton had lost in the parish of St. Mary le Bow on 1 December 1597, and Slater had ‘found’, refused to surrender, and was alleged to have disposed of for his own profit. Damages of £10 10s. were awarded on 3 November 1598. Donstone also seems to have dropped out or may have been dead; he witnessed Helle’s agreement on 3 August 1597, and thereafter no more is heard of him. But incomparably the greatest loss was that of Edward Alleyn, who now retired from the stage and did not return to it for a period of three years. From 29 December 1597 to 8 November 1598 Henslowe made notes of playing goods bought ‘sence my sonne Edward Allen leafte [p]laynge’, and it would appear that the company acknowledged a debt of £50 in respect of his interest on retirement. In place of Alleyn, it would seem that the lead was taken by Robert Shaw and Thomas Downton, perhaps as representing the two elements of which the company was made up. These two were joint payees for the Court money of both 1597–8 and 1598–9. For 1599–1600 Shaw was sole payee. It was, moreover, most often, although by no means always, to one or other of these men that Henslowe’s advances on behalf of the company were made. It must be added that some of the new-comers appear to have sought private assistance from Henslowe in order to enable them to take up their shares. On 14 January 1598, he opened an account of sums received ‘of Humfreye Jeaffes hallfe share’, entered seven instalments up to 4 March, amounting to a total of 60s. 6d., and then noted, ‘This some was payd backe agayne vnto the companey of my lord Admeralles players the 8 of Marche 1598, & they shared yt amonste them’. There is a later account, running from 29 April to 21 July 1598, and amounting by small instalments to 35s., of ‘all such money as I dooe receue for Umfrey Jeaffes and Antoney Jeaffes ... of the companey’. Possibly the brothers only held a single share between them. A similar transaction took place with Gabriel Spencer. On 20 April 1598 this actor gave an acknowledgement for £4 and between 6 April and 24 June Henslowe carried to an account headed ‘℞ of Gabrell Spencer at severall tymes of his share in the gallereyes’ a total of 25s. 6d., of which 5s. 6d. was paid over to Downton. In addition, personal loans were negotiated from time to time by various members of the company, and the reasons given for these indicate that in the course of 1598, besides the dispute of the ex-Pembroke’s men with Langley, Bird and perhaps the company as a whole were engaged in litigation with Thomas Pope, presumably the actor in the Chamberlain’s company.

There does not seem to have been much further change in the composition of the Admiral’s men during 1597–1600. An acknowledgement of the state of their account with Henslowe between 8 and 13 March 1598 bears the signatures of ‘J. Singer, Thomas Downton, William Birde, Robt Shaa, Richard Jones, Gabriell Spenser, Thomas Towne, Humfry Jeffes, Charles Massye, and Samuell Rowlye’. The last two had evidently become sharers in the course of the year. Juby and Anthony Jeffes do not sign, but this is probably due to an accident, as they were certainly sharers both in 1597 and in 1600. Gabriel Spencer was killed by Ben Jonson (cf. ch. xxiii) on 22 September 1598. On 26 September Henslowe wrote to Alleyn at the Brill in Sussex, ‘Now to leat you vnderstand newes I will teall you some but yt is for me harde & heavey. Sence you weare with me I haue loste one of my company which hurteth me greatley; that is Gabrell, for he is slayen in Hogesden fylldes by the handes of Bengemen Jonson bricklayer’. No doubt Henslowe wrote from the heart. Probably Spencer’s share was not yet paid for, and in addition small personal loans to the amount of 66s. stand undischarged against him in the diary, of which the last was on 19 May ‘to bye a plume of feathers which his mane Bradshawe feched of me’. Richard Bradshaw was an actor and may have played as a hired man with the company. A fragmentary ‘plot’ of Troilus and Cressida, probably to be dated in April 1599, yields the names of ‘Mr. Jones’ and his ‘boy’, Thomas Hunt, Stephen, Proctor, and Pigge. Mr. Jones’s boy is shown by a note of 17 November 1599 in the diary to have been called James. Of Proctor no more is known. Stephen is probably Stephen Magett, the tireman, and Pigge was with Alleyn on the tour of Strange’s men in 1593. He is also mentioned, with Dobe, Whittcombe, and Anderson, who may have been actors, in some inventories of properties belonging to Alleyn or to the company in March 1598. Thomas Downton also had in June 1600 a ‘boye’ who played in Cupid and Psyche. Another acknowledgement of account, dated on 10 July 1600, only differs from the former one by the omission of Spencer’s name and the inclusion of those of Juby and Anthony Jeffes. The alleged manuscript notes to a copy of Dekker’s Shoemaker’s Holiday (q.v.), produced in January 1600, which are discredited by Dr. Greg, give the cast as composed of ‘Jones, H. Jeffes, Rowley, Shawe, Massy, Dowton, Singer, Jewby, Towne, A. Jeffes, Birde, Wilson, Flower, Price, Day, Dowton’s boy Ned and Alleine’; the last for a female part. Certainly nothing is known of Day or Wilson as actors for the Admiral’s, or of Price at any such early date, or of Flower at all. But if the document is a forgery, it is a very pointless, and at the same time a very cautious one. And how did the forger, unless he were Collier or Cunningham, know that Day was an actor at all?

The records kept by Henslowe for the period 1597–1600 differ considerably in character from those for 1594–7. The diurnal list of plays performed and of rent-takings disappears altogether. On the other hand, the records of advances made, for the books and licensing of plays, for costumes and properties, and for certain miscellaneous items of expenditure, become full and systematic. A per contra account is also kept of weekly sums received by Henslowe in repayment of such advances, and from time to time a balance is struck, and the hands of the company taken to a settlement or acknowledgement of debt. Henslowe’s book-keeping, however, if not exactly faulty, is not always sufficiently lucid to make the whole of the financial transactions perfectly clear. In the absence of the daily entries of performances, the weekly records of repayments make it possible to determine roughly the periods covered by the theatrical seasons. The company played for twenty continuous weeks from 11 October 1597 to about 4 March 1598, apparently with some irregularity at the beginning and again about Christmas time. Their Court plays were on 27 December and 28 February. In Lent they had a three weeks’ interval, during the course of which they met to read a book in New Fish Street, and ‘played in Fleatstreet pryuat’. Playing was resumed about 25 March and lasted for some fifteen weeks, until about 8 July, making thirty-five weeks in all for the year 1597–8. The company only took two weeks’ vacation in the summer and are not likely to have travelled, although on 27 September, after the new season had begun, Borne is found riding to the Lord Admiral at Croydon at the time of the Queen’s visit there. They played for thirty-one weeks from about 22 July to 24 February 1599, with performances at Court on 27 December, 6 January and 18 February, and stopped for three weeks in Lent. The summer season lasted for eleven weeks from about 19 March to 3 June, making forty-four weeks playing for 1598–9. On Easter Eve Towne and Richard Alleyn went to Court for some unspecified purpose. About the same time Anthony Jeffes was making purchases against St. George’s Day. The interval of this summer was seventeen weeks, but I have no evidence of any travelling. The next season was one of nineteen weeks from about 29 September 1599 to 10 February 1600, with Court performances on 27 December and 1 January, and was followed by a Lenten interval of about four weeks. At the beginning of February they bought a drum and trumpets ‘when to go into the contry’. Whether these were for use during the short break in Lent or not until the following summer must remain uncertain; at any rate the purchase confirms the view that there had been no provincial tour since 1596. Finally they played for nineteen weeks from about 2 March to 13 July, thus completing thirty-six weeks for 1599–1600. Apparently the summer season was diversified by a visit to Windsor for the Garter installation of Henri IV of France on 27 April. In all they seem to have played for about 115 weeks or something under 690 days in 1597–1600, as compared with 728 days in 1594–7.

The entries of sums paid for plays usually give the names of the authors as well as those of the plays, and therefore furnish a good deal of material for reconstituting the literary side of the company’s activity. Henslowe’s terminology is neither precise nor uniform, but it is clear that, while the payments were always entered as loans to the company, they were often made direct by him to the playwrights, on the ‘appointment’ of one or more of its members. Sometimes they are expressed as being ‘to bye a boocke of’ a play; that is to say, for the purchase outright of an old or even a new manuscript. But a new play was generally commissioned, upon the strength of a sample or of an outline of the plot, and in such cases payment was made by instalments, of which the earlier ones were ‘lent upon’ or ‘in earneste of’ or ‘in parte paymente of’, and the last ‘in full paymente of’ the book. Portions of the manuscript were handed over as security for the earlier payments. Production was very rapid, and a play put together in two or three weeks often represented the collaboration of as many as four or even five or six authors. The procedure, which prevailed during the whole of the period covered by the diary, is illustrated by a small group of letters preserved amongst the miscellaneous papers found at Dulwich. Thus on 8 November 1599 Shaw writes with regard to 2 Henry Richmond, ‘Mr. Henshlowe, we haue heard their booke and lyke yt. Their pryce is eight poundes, which I pray pay now to Mr. Wilson, according to our promysse’; and accordingly Henslowe includes in his account, by an entry written and signed by Wilson, a sum of £8 ‘by a note vnder the hand of Mr. Rob: Shaw’. On 14 June 1600 Shaw writes again, ‘I pray you, Mr. Henshlowe, deliuer vnto the bringer hereof the some of fyue & fifty shillinges to make the 3ll fyue shillinges which they receaued before full six poundes in full payment of their booke called the fayre Constance of Roome, whereof I pray you reserue for me Mr. Willsons whole share which is xjs. which I to supply his neede deliuered him yesternight.’ The diary duly records the payment to Drayton, Hathway, Munday, and Dekker ‘at the a poyntment of Roberte Shawe’ of 44s. Similarly Samuel Rowley writes on 4 April 1601, ‘Mr. Hinchloe, I haue harde fyue shetes of a playe of the Conqueste of the Indes & I dow not doute but it wyll be a verye good playe; tharefore I praye ye delyuer them fortye shyllynges in earneste of it & take the papers into your one hands & on Easter eue thaye promyse to make an ende of all the reste’. The earnest and several supplementary earnests were paid to Day, Haughton, and Smith, but the completion of the play lagged until the following September. An undated letter of Rowley’s relates to the withdrawal of a play, ‘Mr. Hynchlo, I praye ye let Mr. Hathwaye haue his papars agayne of the playe of John a Gante & for the repayement of the monye back agayne he is contente to gyue ye a byll of his hande to be payde at some cartayne tyme as in your dyscressyon yow shall thinke good; which done ye may crose it oute of your boouke & keepe the byll; or else wele stande so much indetted to you & kepe the byll our selues’. Henslowe appears to have thought it safer to adopt the second alternative, as incomplete payments to the amount of £1 19s. 0d. for The Conquest of Spain by John of Gaunt still stand in his ‘boouke’. Other letters of the same kind concern Six Yeomen of the West, and Too Good to be True. The normal price for a new play during 1597–1601 seems to have been £6, but sometimes it fell to £5 or possibly even £4, and sometimes the playwrights succeeded in squeezing out a few shillings more. One or two of them, notably Chapman, were able to secure a higher rate from the beginning; and about 1599 a general tendency towards a higher scale of prices becomes discernible. The ‘book’ of an old play could generally be purchased for about £2.

In attempting to estimate the actual ‘output’ of the company, one is faced by the difficulty that some of the plays commissioned are not shown by the diary to have reached the stage of payment in full, and that it must, therefore, remain doubtful whether they were ever completed. It is possible that, as Dr. Greg thinks, some of the payments were made direct by the company, instead of through Henslowe. But the correspondence just quoted rather suggests that any such arrangement would be exceptional; and it would not be inconsistent with human nature, if the extremely out-at-elbows men of letters who hung about the Rose occasionally found it profitable to take their ‘earnest’ for a play, and then to find plausible reasons for indefinitely delaying its completion. Probably in the long run they had to account for the advance, but the example of The Conquest of Spain shows that such a repayment would not necessarily find its way into Henslowe’s account. This view is borne out by an examination of the affairs of one of the most impecunious of them all, Henry Chettle, during 1598–9. During the first six months of the year, he had a hand in half a dozen plays, all of which were completed and paid for in full. But on one of these, 1 Black Bateman of the North, Henslowe appears, perhaps by an oversight, to have paid him £1 too much. At the beginning of May £1 was lent to Chettle upon this play, and the loan does not appear to have been considered when, on 22 May, a further sum of £6 was laid out upon ‘a boocke called Blacke Battmane of the North ... which coste sixe powndes’. On 24 June Chettle borrowed 10s., not apparently on any particular play, and Henslowe seems then to have recalled the overpayment, and noted against Chettle’s name in the diary, ‘All his parte of boockes to this place are payde which weare dew unto hime & he reastes be syddes in my deatte the some of xxxs.’ Chettle collaborated in several other plays, which got completed during the year, but no deduction seems to have been made from his share of the fees in respect of this debt. In addition he had £5 upon A Woman’s Tragedy, upon condition ‘eather to deliver the playe or els to paye the mony with in one forthnyght’; he had 5s. in earnest upon Catiline’s Conspiracy; and he had £1 14s. 0d. in earnest upon Brute, probably a continuation of an older 1 Brute bought by the company. When the last payment on Brute was made on 16 September Henslowe noted, ‘Hary Cheattell vntell this place owes vs viijli ixs dew al his boockes & recknynges payd’. This amount is precisely made up of the 30s. due on 24 June and the sums paid on account of these three plays. By 22 October Chettle had completed 2 Brute and managed somehow to get £6 for it in full. On the same day he gave Henslowe an acknowledgement of a debt, not of £8 9s. 0d., but of £9 9s. 0d. In November he got an earnest of £1 for Tis no Deceit to Deceive the Deceiver, and £1 for ‘mending’ Robin Hood, and in January 1599 30s. ‘to paye his charges in the Marshallsey’. Small loans of a shilling or two are also noted in the margin of the book, and appear to be quite distinct from the company’s account with him, and to indicate private generosities of Henslowe. In February 1599 Chettle had finished Polyphemus, and it is recorded that in full payment of £6 he got £2 10s. down, ‘& strocken of his deatte which he owes vnto the companey fyftye shelenges more’. A separate entry in the diary indicates that he paid off yet another 10s. out of his fee for The Spencers in March. Material is not available for the further tracing of this particular chain of transactions, but the inference that credit obtained for an unfinished play had sometimes to be redeemed out of the profits of a finished one is irresistible. Chettle, at least, does not seem to have been hardly treated, but obviously the unbusinesslike methods of the playwrights kept down the price of plays, and a familiar device of the modern Barabbas was anticipated when Henry Porter was obliged, on the receipt of an earnest, to give Henslowe ‘his faythfulle promysse that I shold haue alle the boockes which he writte ether him sellfe or with any other’. Whatever Henslowe’s precise financial relations with the company may have been, by the way, he seems to have been in a position to pose as paymaster, so far as the poets were concerned.

On the whole, I think it must be concluded that, if the diary fails to record payments to the amount of at least £5 for a new play, there is prima facie evidence that that play never got itself finished. Occasionally, of course, apparently incomplete payments may be explained by the fact that the same play is entered under more than one name. Occasionally, also, a particular play may have been tacitly debited with payments not specifically expressed in the diary to have been made in respect of that play. Thus a sum of £2 paid on 4 February 1598 ‘to dise charge Mr. Dicker owt of the cownter in the Powltrey’ was probably treated as an instalment of the price of Phaethon on which Dekker was then working, and for which otherwise only £4 is entered. Another sum of £3 10s. paid on 30 January 1599 ‘to descarge Thomas Dickers frome the a reaste of my lord Chamberlens men’ seems similarly to have gone towards The First Introduction of the Civil Wars of France. And Haughton probably got 10s. less than he would otherwise have done for Ferrex and Porrex, because he had required a loan of that amount on 10 March 1600, ‘to releace him owt of the Clyncke’. The record, again, for a few plays is most likely rendered imperfect by the loss of a leaf or two from the manuscript, which once contained entries for the end of April and beginning of May 1599. When these factors have been taken into consideration, the resultant total of possibly unfinished plays is not a very large one, amounting for 1597–1600 on my calculation to not more than twenty as against fifty-six new plays duly completed and paid for in full. Of these twenty it is very likely that some were in fact finished, either for other companies, or for the Admiral’s men themselves, later than the period covered by the diary. It is, however, consonant with the literary temperament to suppose that some at least remained within the category of unrealized projects. The most puzzling problem is that of Haughton’s A Woman will have her Will. For this it is impossible to trace payments beyond £2 10s., and these are not stated to be in full. Yet the play is not only now extant but was certainly extant in 1598. In this case I see no alternative to Dr. Greg’s theory of direct payments by the company.

Henslowe’s notes of advances to authors are not the sole material which is available for drawing up an account of the repertory of the Admiral’s men. There are also entries of the purchase of costumes and properties for certain plays, and of fees for the licensing of plays by the Master of the Revels. And there is a valuable series of inventories, formerly preserved at Dulwich, and dating from 1598, which record respectively the stock of apparel and properties in the hands of the Admiral’s men during the second week of March, their play-books at the same date, and the additions made out of Henslowe’s purchases up to about the following August. The theory that some of the plays recorded in the diary were never finished receives confirmation from the absence of any corroborative proof of their existence in these subsidiary entries and documents, whereas such evidence exists in the case of a very large proportion of the plays for which the diary records payment in full. It must not, however, be assumed, either that every play completed necessarily got produced, although it is not likely that many were withheld, or that a play was necessarily not produced, because no special apparel or properties were bought for it, since it may have been quite possible to mount some plays out of the company’s existing stock. The number of fees paid for licensing is so small in proportion to the number of plays certainly produced, that these fees cannot all be supposed to have passed through Henslowe’s hands.

Subject to the difficulties discussed in the foregoing paragraphs, I think that the following is a fairly accurate account of the repertory of the company for the three years now in question. During 1597–8 they purchased seventeen new plays. These, with the names of their authors, were:

• Mother Redcap (Drayton and Munday).
• Phaethon (Dekker).
• 1 Robin Hood (Munday).
• 2 Robin Hood (Chettle and Munday).
• The Triangle of Cuckolds (Dekker).
• The Welshman’s Prize, or, The Famous Wars of Henry I and the Prince of Wales (Chettle, Dekker, and Drayton).
• 1 Earl Godwin and his Three Sons (Chettle, Dekker, Drayton, and Wilson).
• 2 Earl Godwin and his Three Sons (Chettle, Dekker, Drayton, and Wilson).
• King Arthur (Hathway).
• Love Prevented (Porter).
• A Woman will have her Will (Haughton).
• 1 Black Bateman of the North (Chettle, Dekker, Drayton, and Wilson).
• 2 Black Bateman of the North (Chettle and Wilson).
• The Madman’s Morris (Dekker, Drayton, and Wilson).
• The Funeral of Richard Cœur de Lion (Chettle, Drayton, Munday, and Wilson).
• Hannibal and Hermes (Dekker, Drayton, and Wilson).
• Valentine and Orson (Hathway and Munday).

There is evidence of the actual performance of Mother Redcap, Phaethon (January), 1 and 2 Robin Hood (March), 1 Earl Godwin (April), King Arthur (May), 2 Earl Godwin (June), 1 Black Bateman (June). Properties were bought for The Madman’s Morris in July, and the next season probably opened with it. To the new plays must be added Friar Spendleton, produced as ‘ne’ on 31 October, and Dido and Aeneas. A loan of 30s. on 8 January ‘when they fyrst played Dido at nyght’ suggests a supper, not a night performance. Either play may have been purchased at the end of 1596–7, or may have come from Pembroke’s stock. The same applies to Branholt and Alice Pierce, which were probably new when properties were purchased for them in November and December. The company also bought on 12 December two jigs from two young men, for which they paid 6s. 8d. Hardly any of the 1597–8 new plays are extant. The two parts of Robin Hood are The Downfall of Robert Earl of Huntingdon, and The Death of Robert Earl of Huntingdon, printed without Munday’s name as Admiral’s plays in 1601. Haughton’s A Woman will have her Will was entered on the Stationers’ Register on 3 August 1601, and printed with the alternative title of Englishmen for my Money in 1616. Phaethon probably underlies Dekker and Ford’s The Sun’s Darling, and it is a plausible conjecture of Mr. Fleay’s that Love Prevented may be 1 The Two Angry Women of Abingdon, printed as an Admiral’s play in 1599, and not to be traced elsewhere in the diary. The payments for four plays during the year, besides the puzzling A Woman will have her Will, were incomplete. I take it that the £2 paid to Chettle, Dekker, Drayton, and Wilson for Pierce of Exton was transferred to the account for 2 Earl Godwin, which otherwise lacks just that amount of the full £6; that Chettle failed to deliver A Woman’s Tragedy; that Chapman’s Isle of a Woman was held over until 1598–9; and that a projected tragedy of Ben Jonson’s was similarly held over, and then indefinitely postponed owing to the tragedy in real life of Spencer’s death. There are two entries with regard to this. On 3 December 1597, Henslowe lent Jonson 20s. ‘vpon a boocke which he showed the plotte vnto the company which he promysed to deliver vnto the company at Cryssmas next’. On 23 October 1598, a month after the duel, not Jonson, but Chapman, received £3 ‘one his playe boocke & ij ectes of a tragedie of Bengemenes plotte’. I think that Chapman’s own play was The Four Kings and that he finished it in 1599; but I see no sign that he ever did anything with ‘Bengemenes plotte’.

Of older plays the Admiral’s revived at the beginning of the year Chapman’s success of the previous spring, The Comedy of Humours; also the perennial Dr. Faustus, and two pieces which, as they formed no part of the 1594–7 repertory, may have been brought in by Pembroke’s men, Hardicanute and Bourbon. They bought for £8 from Martin Slater 1 and 2 Hercules, Phocas, Pythagoras, and Alexander and Lodowick, all of which had been produced between May 1595 and January 1597, and had evidently been retained by Slater when he left the company. These books presumably do not include that which became the subject of the lawsuit between Slater and the Admiral’s men, and as they had afterwards to buy back some of their old books in a precisely similar way from Alleyn, it is probable that a retiring member of the company had a right to claim a partition of the repertory. They also bought The Cobler of Queenhithe, and from Robert Lee, formerly of the Admiral’s men and afterwards of Queen Anne’s, The Miller. But of these seven purchased plays, the only one that they can be proved to have revived is one of the Hercules plays, for which they bought properties in July. The book-inventory shows that they had plays called Black Joan and Sturgflattery, also possibly from Pembroke’s stock; and the property-inventories that they had properties and clothes, if not in all cases books, for The Battle of Alcazar and for a number of pieces staged during 1594–7, including Mahomet, Tamburlaine, The Jew of Malta, 1 Fortunatus, The Siege of London, Belin Dun, Tasso’s Melancholy, 1 Caesar and Pompey, The Wise Man of West Chester, The Set at Maw, Olympo, Henry V, Longshanks, Troy, Vortigern, Guido, Uther Pendragon. To these must be added Pontius Pilate, revived in 1601 and perhaps from the Pembroke’s stock, and others now unidentifiable. As the company revived The Blind Beggar of Alexandria in 1601 they probably had this also.

The new plays purchased in 1598–9 were twenty-one in number:

• Pierce of Winchester (Dekker, Drayton, and Wilson).
• Hot Anger Soon Cold (Chettle, Jonson, and Porter).
• Chance Medley (Chettle or Dekker, Drayton, Munday, and Wilson).
• Worse Afeared than Hurt (Dekker and Drayton).
• 1 Civil Wars of France (Dekker and Drayton).
• The Fount of New Fashions (Chapman).
• 2 The Conquest of Brute, or, Brute Greenshield (Chettle).
• Connan, Prince of Cornwall (Dekker and Drayton).
• 2 Civil Wars of France (Dekker and Drayton).
• 3 Civil Wars of France (Dekker and Drayton).
• The Four Kings (Chapman).
• War without Blows and Love without Suit (Heywood).
• First Introduction of the Civil Wars of France (Dekker).
• 2 Two Angry Women of Abingdon (Porter).
• Joan as Good as my Lady (Heywood)
• Friar Fox and Gillian of Brentford (Anon.).
• The Spencers (Chettle and Porter).
• Troy’s Revenge and the Tragedy of Polyphemus (Chettle).
• Troilus and Cressida (Chettle and Dekker).
• Agamemnon, or, Orestes Furious (Chettle and Dekker).
• The World Runs on Wheels, or, All Fools but the Fool (Chapman).

The property and licence entries only make it possible to trace the actual performance during the year of Pierce of Winchester (October), 1 and 2 Civil Wars of France (October and November), The Fount of New Fashions (November), 2 Angry Women of Abingdon (February), 2 Conquest of Brute (March), The Four Kings (March), The Spencers (April), and Agamemnon (June). Probably, in view of the extant fragment of a ‘plot’ Troilus and Cressida should be added. The production of Troy’s Revenge was deferred until the following October. No one of this year’s new plays is extant, unless, as is possible, All Fools but the Fool was an early form of Chapman’s All Fools. Earnests were paid in the course of 1598–9 for Catiline’s Conspiracy (Chettle), Tis no Deceit to Deceive the Deceiver (Chettle), William Longsword (Drayton), Two Merry Women of Abingdon (Porter), and an unnamed pastoral tragedy by Chapman, but there is no reason to suppose that any one of these was ever finished. On 9 August 1598 Munday had 10s. in earnest of an unnamed comedy ‘for the corte’ and Drayton gave his word for the book to be done in a fortnight, but the project must have been dropped, as the entry was cancelled. Of old plays the company revived in August Vayvode, in November The Massacre at Paris, in which Bird played the Guise, in December 1 The Conquest of Brute, bought from John Day, and in March Alexander and Lodowick, bought from Martin Slater in the preceding year. As to Vayvode, the entries are rather puzzling. In August Chettle received £1 ‘for his playe of Vayvode’, and the purchase of properties show that the production took place. But in the following January there was a payment of £2 to Alleyn ‘for the playe of Vayvod for the company’. Possibly Alleyn had some rights in the manuscript, which were at first overlooked. On 25 November Chettle had 10s. ‘for mendinge of Roben Hood for the corte’. Either 1 or 2 Robin Hood was therefore probably the play given on 6 January 1599. At the beginning of the year the company bought Mulmutius Dunwallow from William Rankins and another old play called Tristram of Lyons, but it must be uncertain whether they played them. A reference in Guilpin’s Skialetheia suggests that The Spanish Tragedy may have been on the boards of the Rose not long before September 1598.

The new plays completed during 1599–1600, twenty in all, were:

• The Gentle Craft (Dekker).
• Bear a Brain (Dekker).
• Page of Plymouth (Dekker and Jonson).
• Robert II, or, The Scot’s Tragedy (Chettle, Dekker, Jonson, and Marston).
• The Stepmother’s Tragedy (Chettle and Dekker).
• 1 Sir John Oldcastle (Drayton, Hathway, Munday, and Wilson).
• Cox of Collumpton (Day and Haughton).
• 2 Henry Richmond (Wilson).
• 2 Sir John Oldcastle (Drayton, Hathway, Munday, and Wilson).
• Patient Grissell (Chettle, Dekker, and Haughton).
• The Whole History of Fortunatus (Dekker).
• Thomas Merry, or, Beech’s Tragedy (Day and Haughton).
• Jugurtha (Boyle).
• The Seven Wise Masters (Chettle, Day, Dekker, and Haughton).
• Ferrex and Porrex (Haughton).
• Cupid and Psyche, or, The Golden Ass (Chettle, Day, and Dekker).
• Damon and Pythias (Chettle).
• Strange News out of Poland (Haughton and Pett).
• 1 Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green (Chettle and Day).
• 1 Fair Constance of Rome (Dekker, Drayton, Hathway, Munday, and Wilson).

It is possible to verify the actual performance of Page of Plymouth (September), 1 Sir John Oldcastle (November), Fortunatus (December), The Gentle Craft (January), Thomas Merry (January), Patient Grissell (January), 2 Sir John Oldcastle (March), The Seven Wise Masters (March), Ferrex and Porrex (May), Damon and Pythias (May), Strange News out of Poland (May), Cupid and Psyche (June). Sir John Oldcastle must of course be regarded as a counterblast to the Henry IV plays of the Chamberlain’s men, in which the character of Falstaff originally bore the name of the Lollard hero. One infers that it had a considerable success, for the company gave 10s. for ‘Mr. Mundaye and the reste of the poets at the playnge of Sr John Oldcastell the ferste tyme’, and Henslowe notes in the margin that this was ‘as a gefte’. It is with some hesitation that I have included Fortunatus in the list of new plays, because it is impossible to suppose that it was not based upon the earlier Fortunatus, already an old play in 1596, of the properties of which the Admiral’s men certainly retained possession. But Dekker was paid on the scale of a new play, for he got a full £6 in the course of November for the book, together with an additional £1 ‘for the altrenge of the boocke’ and £2 a fortnight later ‘for the eande of Fortewnatus for the corte’. I take it that this was the Court play of 27 December. That of 1 January was another of Dekker’s, The Gentle Craft, also called The Shoemaker’s Holiday, which was published in the year ‘1600’ as played before the Queen ‘on New Year’s Day at night last’ by the Admiral’s men. Fortunatus, 1 Sir John Oldcastle, Patient Grissell, and 1 Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green have also been preserved, while the publication, also in the course of the twelve months ending on 24 March 1601, of Look About You as an Admiral’s play must surely render plausible the hypothesis, rejected by Dr. Greg, of its identity with Bear a Brain. It would seem that Thomas Merry furnishes one of the two parallel plots of Robert Yarington’s Two Lamentable Tragedies, and a notice by Simon Forman suggests that Cox of Collumpton was ultimately finished. An outline of the opening scenes of 2 Henry Richmond is among the Dulwich papers. Publication was a form of popularity which the actors were apt to resent. The Admiral’s men spent £2 on 18 March 1600 ‘to geue vnto the printer to staye the printing of Patient Gresell’. This did not prevent the play being entered on the Stationers’ Register on 28 March, but does perhaps explain why the earliest known edition is dated 1603. The unfinished plays of 1599–1600 were The Poor Man’s Paradise (Haughton), The Orphans’ Tragedy (Chettle), an unnamed Italian tragedy by Day, The Arcadian Virgin (Chettle and Haughton), Owen Tudor (Drayton, Hathway, Munday, and Wilson), Truth’s Supplication to Candlelight (Dekker), The Spanish Moor’s Tragedy (Day, Dekker, and Haughton), The English Fugitives (Haughton), The Devil and his Dame (Haughton), The Wooing of Death (Chettle), Judas (Haughton), 2 Fair Constance of Rome (Hathway), and an unnamed play by Chettle and Day. Except in so far as Fortunatus was an old play, I find no trace of a revival during 1599–1600, but it may be assumed that some of the productions of the last two years still held the boards.

The year 1600 was another turning-point in the history of the company. Probably at some date between 14 August, when the first entry in a fresh account was made, and 28 October, when Pembroke’s men were in occupation of the Rose, they crossed the river, and took up their quarters at Alleyn’s recently built Fortune, on the north-west boundary of the City. A more important event still was the return of Alleyn himself to the stage, from which he had been absent for three years. It is suggested in the Privy Council letter of 8 April 1600 to the Middlesex justices in favour of the Fortune project, that this step was determined by the personal wish of the Queen to see the great actor at Court with his fellows again. It is not quite clear on what terms he rejoined the company. There was a ‘composicion’ or agreement, in connexion with which a payment of £4 was made to him on 11 November. The next entry, which is undated, runs, ‘Pd vnto my sonne Alleyn for the firste weckes playe the xj parte of xvijll ixs which came to therti & ij shellinges’. There are no further entries of the same kind until the date of a reckoning in February 1602, when Henslowe paid Alleyn 27s. 6d. ‘dew to my sone out of the gallery money’. Probably this was a share of some small residue, the origin of which cannot now be traced. The earlier payment suggests that Alleyn received one full share of the actors’ takings, for, if I am right in supposing that the brothers Jeffes only held half a share each, there would have been just ten sharers besides himself. Or possibly his share may have been limited to the actors’ moiety of the gallery takings, and the outgoings may all have been charged to the receipts from the yard. Certainly Alleyn does not seem to have had any responsibility for these outgoings. His name is never put with those of other sharers to Henslowe’s periodical reckonings, and if his play-books were used, they were bought from him. On the other hand, he sometimes, although not so often as some of his fellows, ‘appointed’ payments, and he received the Court money for the company, alike in 1601, 1602, and 1603. That his share did not pass through Henslowe’s hands after the date of the first instalment is perhaps explained by the assumption that, as the owner and joint occupier with Henslowe of the Fortune, the appointment of a ‘gatherer’ for the gallery money may naturally have fallen to him.

Some such change in the financial arrangements may also account for the fact that, while Henslowe’s record of advances continues on the same lines as that for 1597–1600, the notes of weekly repayments are now discontinued. As a result it is no longer possible to determine with any exactness the length of the theatrical seasons, since, naturally enough, the outgoings did not altogether stop while the house was closed. Their course, however, suggests intervals in February and March 1601, February to April 1602, August 1602 and January and February 1603. It is possible, although not very likely, that there was no cessation of playing during the summer of 1601. I find no evidence of further provincial travels before the end of the reign. These were, I think, years of prosperity. The players still required small personal advances from time to time, and Thomas Towne was reduced to pawning a pair of stockings on 13 March 1602. But it is noticeable that about the previous June Henslowe opened an account under the heading, ‘Begininge to receue of thes meane ther privet deates which they owe vnto me’, and was able to enter in it a series of repayments by Jones, Downton, Bird, and Shaw. Bird, however, still owed £10 10s. on 12 March 1602, and Henslowe noted, ‘He is cleere of all debtes & demaundes except theis debtes and such stocke & covenentes as I maie clayme & challendge of him by reason of his coniunction with the companie’. Whether the playwrights reaped any benefit may be doubted. The tendency to a rise of prices which showed itself in 1599 was hardly maintained. Some of them were still impecunious enough. The company had, on more than one occasion to redeem a play which the unfortunate Chettle had pawned with one Bromfield, a mercer; and in March 1602 he seems to have followed Porter’s example and put his hand, for a consideration of £3, to an instrument binding him to write for them alone. There were some legal troubles in the course of 1601. A sum of £21 10s. had to be paid on a bond to a Mr. Treheren during March, and in August there were fees to a jury and a clerk of assizes. The company had also to find 10s. in May ‘to geatte the boye into the ospetalle which was hurt at the Fortewne’. Information as to the composition of the company at some time between Alleyn’s return and February 1602 is given by the ‘plot’ of The Battle of Alcazar, although, as this is mutilated, it must not be treated as negative evidence, and in particular the names of W. Borne and John Singer are missing. All the other sharers, however, are found in it—‘Mr. Ed. Allen, Mr. Doughton, Mr. Juby, Mr. Shaa, Mr. Jones, Mr. Towne, Antony Jeffes, H. Jeffes, Mr. Charles [Massey], and Mr. Sam [Rowley]’. There are also Mr. Rich. Allen and Mr. Hunt, who were not sharers, but whose long service had apparently earned them the dignity of the ‘Mr.’, W. Kendall, Jeames, who was possibly Henslowe’s apprentice James Bristow and possibly Jones’s boy of the same name, and Dob, who was probably the Dobe of the 1598 inventory. The remaining names, all of which are new, are those of W. Cartwright, who, however, had witnessed a loan for Henslowe as far back as 21 April 1598, Dick Jubie, Ro. Tailor, George Somerset, Tho. Drum, [Thomas] Parsons, Harry, and the ‘boys’ of Mr. Allen and Mr. Towne. The only important woman’s part, that of Callipolis, is assigned by the ‘plot’ to Pisano, which does not look like an actor’s name and may be a mistake. The services of Bristow were evidently leased out by Henslowe to the company or some one of its members, at a rate of 3s. a week. Antony Jeffes paid two weeks’ arrears ‘for my boyes Jeames wages’ in August 1600, and Henslowe charged the company £6 10s. on the same account in the following February. Another boy attached to the company about the same time must have been ‘Nick’, for whom hose ‘to tumbell in be fore the quen’ were bought on 25 December 1601. Hugh Davis, for the mending of whose tawny coat ‘which was eatten with the rattes’ 6s. 7d. was paid in November 1601, was perhaps a hired man. A list of the responsible members of the company is attached by Henslowe to a reckoning cast between 7 and 23 February 1602. They were then ‘John Singer, Thomas Downton, William Byrd, Edward Juby, Thomas Towne, Humphrey Jeffs, Anthony Jeffs, Samuel Rowley, and Charles Massy’. A note is added that £50 had been advanced ‘to geve vnto Mr. Jonnes & Mr. Shaw at ther goinge a waye’. This departure must have been quite recent. Shaw had been agent for the company on the previous 21 January, and the list of continuing members is in fact in his handwriting. The last instalment of Jones’s private debt had been paid off on 1 November. His three years’ agreement with Henslowe had expired at Michaelmas 1600. Richard Alleyn must have died in September 1602, for on the 19th of that month his widow borrowed £5 10s. to take her mantle and sheet and face-cloth out of pawn. Neither Shaw nor Jones nor Richard Alleyn is in the plot of 1 Tamar Cham, which may reasonably be assigned to a date in the vicinity of the purchase of the book from Alleyn on 2 October 1602. This is of interest, partly because it is complete, and partly because there was a procession in the play, and the number of supernumeraries required must have tried the resources of the establishment to their utmost. All the principal members of the company appeared—‘Mr. Allen, Mr. Denygten, Mr. Boorne, Mr. Towne, Mr. Singer, Mr. Jubie, H. Jeffs, A. Jeffs, Mr. Charles [Massey], and Mr. Sam [Rowley]’; and in addition Dick Jubie, W. Cart[wright], George [Somerset], Tho. Parsons, and Jeames [Bristow], who were in The Battle of Alcazar, and W. Parr, Tho. Marbeck, Jack Grigorie, Gedion, Gibbs, Tho. Rowley, Rester, ‘old Browne’, Ned Browne, ‘the red fast fellow’ and several boys, described, perhaps in some cases twice over, as Jack Jones, ‘little Will’, ‘little Will Barne’, who do not seem to be identical, ‘Gils his boy’, ‘Mr. Denyghtens little boy’, perhaps the same already recorded in 1600, and ‘the other little boy’. ‘Old Browne’ can hardly be Robert Browne, who seems to have been in Germany; but Ned Browne may be the Edward Browne who, like Robert, was a member of Worcester’s company in 1583. Little is added by the only other extant ‘plot’, the fragmentary one of 2 Fortune’s Tennis. This is difficult to date, but it must be later than Dekker’s 1 Fortune’s Tennis of September 1600, and may not improbably be Munday’s Set at Tennis of December 1602. The few names which it contains—Mr. Singer, Sam, Charles, Geo[rge Somerset], R. Tailor, W. Cartwright, Pavy—suggest proximity to The Battle of Alcazar and 1 Tamar Cham. The only fresh one is that of Pavy, who may or may not be connected with the Salathiel Pavy of Ben Jonson’s epitaph. Both 1 Tamar Cham and 2 Fortune’s Tennis must be earlier than January 1603, a month which saw the retirement of the old Queen’s man, John Singer. So at least may be inferred from the fact that he makes no further appearance in the diary after 13 January, when he received £5 ‘for his play called Syngers Vallentarey’. I take ‘vallentarey’ to mean ‘valediction’. His name is absent from the next list of the company, which belongs to 1604. He probably left to become an ordinary Groom of the Chamber in the royal household, a post which he is found occupying at the time of Elizabeth’s funeral.

The succession of new plays was not quite so rapid during 1600–3 as in previous periods. I can only trace thirty-one in all, as against fifty-five in 1594–7 and sixty-two in 1599–1600. It may well have been the case that Alleyn, who had ‘created’ parts in the ’eighties and early ’nineties, had a tendency towards revivals. For 1600–1 the company bought only seven new books. These were:

• 1 Fortune’s Tennis (Dekker).
• Hannibal and Scipio (Hathway and Rankins).
• Scogan and Skelton (Hathway and Rankins).
• All is not Gold that Glisters (Chettle).
• 2 Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green (Day and Haughton).
• The Six Yeomen of the West (Day and Haughton).
• King Sebastian of Portugal (Chettle and Dekker).

None of these plays is extant, but the purchase of properties testifies to the performance of 2 Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green in April and The Six Yeomen of the West in July. Moreover, Day received a bonus of 10s. between 27 April and 2 May ‘after the playinge of’ the former piece. Only £1 was paid for 1 Fortune’s Tennis, but the existence of a ‘plot’ for 2 Fortune’s Tennis suggests that it must have been completed. Probably it was a short topical overture designed to celebrate the opening of the Fortune. Unfinished plays were Robin Hood’s Pennyworths (Haughton) and The Conquest of Spain by John of Gaunt (Hathway and Rankins). The revivals included Phaethon (January), The Blind Beggar of Alexandria (May), and The Jew of Malta (May). Dekker had £2 for ‘alterynge of’ Phaethon for the Court, and this was therefore the Admiral’s play of 6 January 1601. They also appeared on 28 December and 2 February. Dr. Faustus was entered on 7 January; the earliest print (1604) bears their name. The new books of 1601–2 were fourteen in number, as follows:

• The Conquest of the West Indies (Day, Haughton, and Smith).
• 3 Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green (Day and Haughton).
• The Life of Cardinal Wolsey (Chettle).
• 1 The Six Clothiers (Hathway, Haughton, and Smith).
• The Rising of Cardinal Wolsey (Chettle, Drayton, Munday, and Smith).
• Friar Rush and the Proud Woman of Antwerp (Chettle, Day, and Haughton).
• Judas (Bird and Rowley).
• Too Good to be True (Chettle, Hathway, and Smith).
• Malcolm King of Scots (Massey).
• Love Parts Friendship (Chettle and Smith).
• Jephthah (Dekker and Munday).
• Tobias (Chettle).
• The Bristol Tragedy (Day).
• Caesar’s Fall, or, The Two Shapes (Dekker, Drayton, Middleton, Munday, and Webster).

At least ten of these appear to have been played: 2 Cardinal Wolsey (August), 3 Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green (September), Judas (January), The Conquest of the West Indies (January), Malcolm King of Scots (April), Love Parts Friendship (May), 1 Cardinal Wolsey (June), Jephthah (July), and at uncertain dates, Tobias and probably The Bristol Tragedy. None is now extant. The unfinished plays were The Humorous Earl of Gloucester with his Conquest of Portugal (Wadeson), 2 Tom Dough (Day and Haughton), The Orphan’s Tragedy (Chettle), 2 The Six Clothiers (Hathway, Haughton, and Smith), The Spanish Fig (Anon.), Richard Crookback (Jonson), A Danish Tragedy (Chettle), and A Medicine for a Curst Wife (Dekker). There was considerable activity of revival during the year. Six old plays belonging to the 1594–7 repertory, for some of which the company already held the properties, were bought from Alleyn at £2 each, Mahomet in August, The Wise Man of West Chester in September, Vortigern in November, and The French Doctor, The Massacre at Paris, and Crack Me this Nut in January. The first and the last three of these certainly were played, and the revival of The Massacre at Paris appears to have caused annoyance to Henri IV. In addition, properties were bought for one of the Hercules plays in December, Dekker got 10s. for a prologue and epilogue to Pontius Pilate in January, and Jonson wrote additions to The Spanish Tragedy, possibly those now extant, in September, although it may be doubted whether the further additions contemplated in the following June were ever made. There is nothing to show what was selected, other than Nick’s tumbling, for the Admiral’s only Court play of 1601–2, which took place on 27 December.

The season of 1602–3 was, of course, shortened by the death of Elizabeth and the outbreak of plague. The new plays numbered nine. They were:

• Samson (Anon.).
• Felmelanco (Chettle and Robinson).
• Joshua (Rowley).
• Randal Earl of Chester (Middleton).
• Merry as May Be (Day, Hathway, and Smith).
• The Set at Tennis (Munday).
• 1 The London Florentine (Chettle and Heywood).
• Singer’s Voluntary (Singer).
• The Boss of Billingsgate (Day, Hathway, and another).

It must be added that in September properties were bought for a ‘new playe’ called The Earl of Hertford, which it seems impossible to identify with any of the pieces bought. This looks like one of the rare cases in which payment did not pass through Henslowe’s hands. This and Samson are the only new plays of the year, the actual performance of which can be verified; and none of these plays is extant. I suspect, however, that Munday’s Set at Tennis is the 2 Fortune’s Tennis of which a ‘plot’ survives. The payment, of only £3, was ‘in full’, and it may, like 1 Fortune’s Tennis, have been a short piece of some exceptional character, motived by the name of the theatre in which it was presented. Unfinished plays at the end of the season were The Widow’s Charm (Munday or Wadeson), William Cartwright (Haughton), Hoffman (Chettle), 2 London Florentine (Chettle and Heywood), The Siege of Dunkirk and Alleyn the Pirate (Massey). The revival of old plays continued. Costumes for Vortigern, one of those bought from Alleyn in the previous year, were in preparation during September, and Alleyn’s stock yielded three more, Philip of Spain and Longshanks in August and Tamar Cham, probably the second part, as the extant ‘plot’ testifies, in October. The last two of these belonged to the Admiral’s repertory of 1594–7, but the origin of Philip of Spain is unknown. A book of The Four Sons of Aymon, for which £2 was paid to Robert Shaw, was probably also old, and was bought on condition that Shaw should repay the £2, unless the play was used by the Admiral’s or some other company with his consent by Christmas 1604. Bird and Rowley had £4 in September for additions to Dr. Faustus. Dekker completed some alterations of Tasso’s Melancholy, another 1594–7 play, in December, and in the same month Middleton wrote ‘for the corte’ a prologue and epilogue to Greene’s Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, which I should suppose to have been Henslowe’s property, as it was played by Strange’s men in 1592–3 and the Queen’s and Sussex’s in 1594. This probably served for the first of the three appearances made by the Admiral’s at Court, on 27 December. The other two were on 6 March and on a date unspecified. For one of these occasions Chettle was writing a prologue and epilogue at the end of December, but the play is not named. One of the new plays, Merry as May Be, was intended for Court, when the first payment on account of it was made on 9 November.

On 12 March 1603 Henslowe practically closes the detailed record which he had kept continuously in his diary since October 1597 of his financial transactions, otherwise than by way of rent, with the Admiral’s men. A brief review of these is not without interest. His advances from 21 October 1597 to 8 March 1598 amounted to £46 7s. 3d., and to this he took the signatures of the company, with the note, ‘Thes men dothe aknowlege this deat to be dewe by them by seatynge of ther handes to yette’. By 28 July a further amount of £120 15s. 4d. had been incurred, making a total of £166 17s. 7d. for 1597–8. During the same period he entered weekly receipts from the company to a total of £125. These must have gone to an old debt, for he did not balance them with the payments for the year, but carried on the whole debit of £166 17s. 7d. to 1598–9. Apparently, however, he was not satisfied with the way in which expenditure was outstripping income, for he headed a new receipts account, ‘Here I begyne to receue the wholle gallereys frome this daye beinge the 29 of July 1598’, and the weekly entries become about double what they were during 1597–8. On the other hand, there is also a considerable increase in the rate of expenditure. It is an ingenious and, I think, sound conjecture of Dr. Greg’s, that throughout 1594–1603 Henslowe was taking half the gallery money for rent, and that, at different times, he also took either the other half, or another quarter only, to recoup himself for his advances. The outgoings entered during 1598–9 reach £435 7s. 4d., but some items for March and April 1599 are probably missing, owing to a mutilation of the manuscript. The receipts for the same period were £358 3s. On 13 October 1599, about a fortnight after the beginning of the 1599–1600 season, a balance was struck. Henslowe credited the company with the £358 received from the gallery money, and debited them with £632 advanced by him. This includes £166 17s. 7d. for 1597–8, £435 7s. 4d. for 1598–9, and £29 15s. 1d., which may reasonably be taken as the sum of the missing entries for March and April 1599. The balance of £274 remained as a debt from the company. They did not, however, set their hands to a reckoning until the end of the next year, on 10 July 1600. During 1599–1600 a fresh account had been running, on which Henslowe’s receipts were £202 10s. and his payments £222 5s. 6d. At the reckoning the company’s indebtedness is calculated at £300, and is admitted by the formula, ‘which some of three hundred powndes we whose names are here vnder written doe acknowledge our dewe debt & doe promyse payment’. To this their signatures are appended. There is, however, an unexplained discrepancy of £6 4s. 6d., as the old debt of £274 and the 1599–1600 debit balance of £19 15s. 6d. only make up £293 15s. 6d.

From 1600 onwards there are no records of receipts. A continuous account of payments is kept up to 7 February 1602. The total amounts to £304 10s. 4d., but Henslowe sums it in error as £308 6s. 4d., and notes, ‘Frome ther handes to this place is 308ll-06s-04d dewe vnto me & with the three hundred of owld is £608-06-04d’. He then adds the £50 paid to Jones and Shaw on retirement, ‘which is not in this recknynge’. Above this summary comes a list of names, said by Dr. Greg to be in Shaw’s hand, of those sharers who were continuing in the company, headed by the figures ‘211. 9. 0.’ I think the interpretation is that £386 17s. 4d. of the £608 6s. 4d. was paid out of gallery money or other sources, leaving £211 9s., together with the £50 for Jones and Shaw, chargeable on the company. This is borne out by the remnant of the accounts, which is headed, ‘Begininge with a new recknyng with my lord of Notingames men the 23 daye of Febreary 1601 as foloweth’. The expenditure on this new reckoning up to 12 March 1603 was, as calculated by Henslowe, £188 11s. 6d., and he adds to this total a sum of £211 9s. ‘vpon band’, being evidently the residue of the debt as it stood at the close of the old reckoning, and makes a total of £400 0s. 6d. This, with the £50 for Jones and Shaw, was no doubt what the company owed when the detailed account in the diary closed. There was, however, an unstated amount of gallery receipts during 1602–3 to set against it; and in fact a retrospect of the whole series of figures shows that there would have been a pretty fair equivalence of gallery money and advances throughout, but for the exceptionally heavy expenditure of 1598–9, £465 2s. 5d. in all, which left the company saddled with an obligation which they never quite overtook. This expenditure was more than half the total expenditure of £854 5s. 6d. for the triennium 1597–1600, and nearly as much as the whole expenditure of £493 1s. 10d. for the triennium 1600–3, during which it may be suspected that the business capacities of Alleyn brought about considerable economies.

The accounts may be looked at from another point of view. If the unanalysable sum of £29 15s. 1d. for the missing items of March and April 1599 be neglected, there was a total expenditure for the six years of £1,317 11s. 3d. Of this £652 13s. 8d., being about half, went in payments in respect of play-books; £561 1s. 1d. for properties and apparel; and £103 16s. 6d. in miscellaneous outgoings, such as licensing fees, legal charges, musical instruments, travelling expenses, merry-makings and the like. Thus, if the company supped together at Mr. Mason’s of the Queen’s Head, or met to read a ‘book’ at the Sun in New Fish Street, Henslowe would put his hand into his pocket to pay the score, and would not forget afterwards to debit the company with the amount in his diary. It must, of course, be borne in mind that only part of this miscellaneous expenditure was incurred through Henslowe. He certainly did not, for example, pay all the fees for the licensing of new plays by the Master of the Revels. And of course there were many matters, in particular the wages of hired actors and servitors, for which the company had regularly to find funds in other ways. It is probable that only play-books, properties, and apparel were normally charged to his account, although the convenience of an occasional extension of his functions can readily be understood. Dr. Greg may be right in thinking that his position as agent for the company in its purchases was a natural development of his pawnbroking business. But during the period under review he did not, as a rule, supply them with goods himself. A sale of ‘A shorte velluett clocke wraght with bugell & a gearcken of velluet layd with brade coper sylver lace’ for £4 on 28 November 1598 was exceptional. Usually the payments are to tradesmen, to the mercers Stone, Richard Heath, and Robert Bromfield, to ‘him at the Eagell and Chylld’ for armour, to Mrs. Gosson for head-tires, and for wigs to one Father Ogle, who is mentioned also in the Revels Accounts and in the play of Sir Thomas More. Sometimes ready-made garments, new or second-hand, were bought. A doublet and hose of sea-water green satin cost £3 and a doublet and ‘venesyons’ of cloth of silver wrought with red silk £4 10s. But often stuffs were obtained in piece and made up by tailors, of whom the company employed two, Dover and Radford, the latter known, for the sake of distinction, as ‘the little tailor’. These and William White, who made the crowns, probably worked at the theatre, in the tiring-house. The company gave 6s. a yard for russet broadcloth and the same for murrey satin, 12s. for other satins, 12s. 6d. for taffeties, and no less than £1 for ‘ij pylle velluet of carnardyn’. Laces cost 1d. each; copper lace anything from 4s. a pound to 1s. 2d. an ounce. Of this they used quantities, and in the summer of 1601 they had run up a considerable ‘old debt’ to the copper lace-man, as well as another to Heath the mercer, which had to be paid off by degrees. The more expensive garments, such as a rich cloak bought of Langley for £19, were, of course, an investment on the part of the company, and were worn in their time by many sharers and hired men in different parts. But the principal actors had also, as Alleyn’s inventory shows, their private wardrobes. Henslowe was prepared to furnish these on the instalment system. Thus Richard Jones bought in 1594 ‘a manes gowne of pechecoler in grayne’ for £3 payable in weekly sums of 5s., and Thomas Towne in 1598 ‘a blacke clothe clocke layd with sylke lace’ for 26s. 8d. at 1s. weekly. It was as hard to keep these glories as to procure them. On one occasion the company came to the rescue and lent Thomas Downton £12 10s., to fetch out of pawn two cloaks, ‘which they exsepted into the stock’. The one was ‘ashecolerd velluet embradered with gowld’, the other ‘a longe black velluet clocke layd with sylke lace’.

The termination of the record of advances after 12 March 1603 indicates an interruption of performances, probably due to the increasing illness of Elizabeth, who died on the following 24 March. Thereafter there are only a few winding-up entries in the diary. The company must have immediately begun to travel under the leadership of Thomas Downton, who in the course of 1602–3 received a gift for them from the Corporation of Canterbury, ‘because it was thought fitt they should not play at all, in regard that our late Queene was then very sicke or dead as they supposed’. London playing, if resumed at all, must have very soon been stopped again by the plague. There was some further small expenditure, of which the details are not given, before Henslowe noted that, in addition to the bond for £211 9s., ‘Ther reasteth dew vnto me to this daye beinge the v daye of Maye 1603 when we leafte of playe now at the Kynges cominge all recknynges abated the some of a hundred fowerscore & sevntenepowndes & thirteneshellynges & fowerpence I saye dew—£197 13s. 4d. the fyftye powndes which Jonnes & Shawe had at ther goinge a way not reconed’. The company travelled again during the plague, being traceable as the Admiral’s men in 1602–3 at Bath and York and on 18 August 1603 at Leicester, and as the Earl of Nottingham’s in 1602–3 at Coventry. The tour was over by 21 October, on which date Joan Alleyn wrote to her husband at the house of Mr. Chaloner in Sussex, telling him amongst other things that ‘all of your owne company ar well at theyr owne houses’, that all the other companies had returned, that ‘Nicke and Jeames be well’, and that ‘Browne of the Boares head’ had not gone into the country at all, and was now dead, ‘& dyed very pore’. This might be either Edward Browne, or the ‘old Browne’ who appeared with him in 1 Tamar Cham in the previous autumn. In any case, it is clear from the reference to him that he was not a regular member of Alleyn’s company. ‘Jeames’ is no doubt James Bristow, who, as Henslowe’s apprentice, would be likely to form part of his household; and ‘Nicke’, who seems to have been in the same position, may be supposed to be the Nick who tumbled before the Queen at Christmas 1601.

The Jacobean records of the company seem meagre in the absence of Henslowe’s detailed register of proceedings. About Christmas 1603 they were taken into the service of Prince Henry, and are hereafter known as the Prince’s players. They are entered amongst other ‘Officers to the Prince’ as receiving four and a half yards of red cloth apiece as liveries for the coronation procession on 15 March 1604, and their names are given as ‘Edward Allen, William Bird, Thomas Towne, Thomas Dowton, Samuell Rowley, Edward Jubie, Humfry Jeffes, Charles Massey, and Anthony Jeffes’. Alleyn, even if not a ‘sharer’, was therefore a member of the company in its official capacity. He is also named as the Prince’s servant, both in the printed account of the entertainment at which, dressed as a Genius, he delivered a speech, and in Stowe’s description of a bear-baiting which formed part of the festivities. It may, however, be inferred that he took an early opportunity of leaving a profession to which he had only been recalled by the personal whim of the late Queen. He was joint payee with Juby in the warrant of 19 February, but Juby’s name stands alone in another of 17 April and in those of all subsequent years up to 1615. And when the company received a formal licence by patent on 30 April 1606, Alleyn’s name was omitted, and does not appear in any further list of its members. It is true that as late as 11 May 1611 he is still described in a formal document as the Prince’s servant, but he may have held some other appointment, actual or honorific, in the household. A note of his resources about 1605, however, includes ‘my share of aparell, £100’. And he certainly remained interested in the company. They were his tenants at the Fortune, although an unexecuted draft of a lease to Thomas Downton dated in 1608 suggests that he may have taken steps to transfer the whole or a share of his direct interest to them. Under this lease Downton was to receive during thirteen years a thirty-second part of the daily profits accruing to Henslowe and Alleyn, and in return to pay £27 10s., a rent of 10s. annually and his proportionate share of repairs, and to bind himself to play in the house and not elsewhere without consent. On 11 April 1612 Robert Browne is found writing to Alleyn on behalf of one Mr. Rose, lately ‘entertayned amongst the princes men’, to request his interest as one ‘who he knowes can strike a greter stroke amongst them then this’ to procure him a ‘gathering place’ for his wife. Another letter from Bird to Alleyn, also about a gatherer, is amusing enough to quote in full. It is undated.

‘Sir there is one Jhon Russell, that by yowr apoyntment was made a gatherer wth vs, but my fellowes finding often falce to vs, haue many tymes warnd him ffrom taking the box. And he as often, with moste damnable othes, hath vowde neuer to touch, yet not with standing his execrable othes, he hath taken the box, & many tymes moste vnconsionablye gathered, for which we haue resolued he shall neuer more come to the doore; yet for your sake, he shall haue his wages, to be a nessessary atendaunt on the stage, and if he will pleasure himself and vs, to mend our garmentes, when he hath leysure, weele pay him for that to. I pray send vs word if this motion will satisfie you; for him his dishonestye is such we knowe it will not, Thus yealding our selues in that & a farr greater matter to be comaunded by you I committ you to god. Your loving ffrend to comaunde. W Birde.’

With the exception of Alleyn, all the players of the 1604 list and no others appear in the patent of 1606, the text of which follows:

Iames by the grace of God &c. To all Iustices, Maiors, Sheriffes, bailiffes, Constables, headboroughes and other our officers and loving subiectes greeting. Knowe ye that wee of our especiall grace, certaine knowledge, and meere mocion haue licenced and auctorized, and by theis presentes doe licence and auctorize Thomas Downton, Thomas Towne, William Byrde, Edwarde Iuby, Samuell Rowle, Humfrey Ieffes, Charles Massey, and Anthonie Ieffes, Servauntes to our dearest sonne the Prince, and the rest of theire Associates to vse and exercise the arte and facultie of playing Commedies, Tragedies, Histories, Enterludes, Moralls, Pastoralls, Stageplayes, and such other like as they haue alreadie studied or hereafter shall vse or studie, aswell for the recreacion of our loving subiectes, as for our solace and pleasure when wee shall thincke good to see them, during our pleasure, And the said Commedies, Tragedies, histories, Enterludes, Moralls, pastoralls, stageplaies, and suche like to shewe and exercise publiquelie to their best Commoditie, aswell within theire nowe vsuall house called the Fortune within our Countie of Middlesex, as alsoe within anie Towne halls or Moutehalls or other convenient places within the libertie and ffredome of anie other Cittie, vniversitie, Towne, or Boroughe whatsoever, within our Realmes and Domynions, willing and Commaunding you and everie of you, as you tender our pleasure, not onelie to permitt and suffer them herein without anie your lettes, hindraunces, or molestacions during our saide pleasure, but alsoe to be aiding and assisting vnto them yf anie wrong be to them offered, And to allowe them such former curtesies as hath been given to men of theire place and quallitie, And alsoe what further favour you shall shewe vnto them for our sake wee shall take kindelie at your handes. Prouided alwaies, and our will and pleasure ys, that all auctoritie, power, priuiledges, and profittes whatsoever belonging and properlie appertaining to the Maister of our Revells in respecte of his office, and everie Clause, article, or graunte conteined within the letteres patentes or Commission, which haue heretofore been graunted or directed by the late Queene Elizabeth our deere Sister, or by our selves, to our welbeloued servantes Edmonde Tilney, Maister of the office of our said Revells, or to Sir George Bucke knighte, or to either of them in possession or reversion, shall be remayne and abide entire, and in full force estate and vertue, and in as ample sorte as yf this our Commission had never been made. In witnesse whereof etc. Witnesse our selfe at Westminster the Thirtith daie of Aprill. per breve de priuato sigillo.

Between 1606 and 1610 it seems to have been thought desirable to strengthen the composition of the company by the introduction of new blood. A list of ‘Comedyanes and Playores’, included in the establishment book drawn up when Henry formed his own Household as Prince of Wales in 1610, contains six names in addition to the eight of the patent. They are ‘Edward Colbrande, Wm. Parre, Rychard Pryore, William Stratford, Frauncys Grace, and John Shanke’. Of these William Parr, who is in the plot of 1 Tamar Cham in 1602, is alone traceable in the earlier records of the company. Shank had been of Pembroke’s and Queen Elizabeth’s men.

Henslowe entered two more advances in his diary, one for ‘facynge of a blacke grogren clocke with taffytye’, the other to Dekker and Middleton in earnest of The Patient Man and the Honest Whore. This was entered in the Stationers’ Register on 9 November 1604, and printed as The Honest Whore during the year. The name of Towne is in a stage-direction. On 14 March ‘1604’, which may have been either 1604 or 1605, Henslowe had a final reckoning with the company and noted ‘Caste vp all the acowntes frome the begininge of the world vntell this daye beinge the 14 daye of Marche 1604 by Thomas Dowghton & Edward Jube for the company of the prynces men & I Phillipe Henslow so ther reasteth dew vnto me P Henslow the some of xxiiijli all reconynges consernynge the company in stocke generall descarged & my sealfe descarged to them of al deates’. With this, so far as the extant book goes, the record of his transactions with the company practically ceases. The only exception is a note of receipts at the Fortune during the three days next after Christmas in 1608, which amounted to 25s., 45s., and 44s. 9d. respectively. Something of the career of the Prince’s men may be gleaned from other sources. They played at Court before James on 21 January and 20 February 1604, and before Henry on 4, 15, and 22 January; and during the following Christmas before Anne on 23 November 1604 and before Henry on 24 November, 14 and 19 December, and on 15 and 22 January and 5 and 19 February 1605. On 8 February 1605 their play of Richard Whittington, of which nothing further is known, was entered on the Stationers’ Register. In the same year Samuel Rowley’s When You See Me, You Know Me, was printed as played by them. During the Christmas of 1605–6 they gave three plays before James and three before Henry. In 1604–5 they were at Maidstone and Winchester, in 1605–6 at Bath, on 17 July 1606 at Oxford, and on 17 October at Ipswich. During the Christmas of 1606–7 they gave six plays before James. Dekker’s Whore of Babylon was entered on the Stationers’ Register on 20 April 1607 and printed as theirs in the same year. In 1606–7 they were at Bath. During the Christmas of 1607–8 they gave four plays before James and Henry. In 1607–8 they were at Maidstone and Saffron Walden, and on 1 October 1608 they were at Leicester; but a visit of the same year from ‘the Princes players of the White Chapple, London’ is rather to be assigned to the Duke of York’s men (q.v.). They gave three plays before James and Henry during the Christmas of 1608–9, four before James during that of 1609–10, and four before James during that of 1610–11. Middleton and Dekker’s The Roaring Girl was printed in 1611 as lately played by them at the Fortune, and Field’s Amends for Ladies (c. 1610–11) names ‘Long Meg and the Ship’ as in their repertory. Presumably their Long Meg of Westminster of 1595 still held the boards. In 1608–9 they were at Shrewsbury and Saffron Walden, in 1609–10 at Shrewsbury and Hereford, in 1610–11 at Shrewsbury and Winchester.

They played at Court before James on 28 and 29 December 1611, giving on the second night The Almanac, and before Henry in February and Elizabeth in April 1612. On 1 October 1612 the lewd jigs, songs, and dances at the Fortune are recited in an order of the Middlesex justices as tending to promote breaches of the peace. One of these may have been the occasion on which an obscure actor, Garlick by name, made himself offensive to the more refined part of his audience. On the following 7 November Henry died and on 7 December his players figured in his funeral procession.

They found a new patron in the Elector Palatine, then in England, and on entering his service got a new patent, which bears date 11 January 1613 and closely follows in its terms that of 1606. The house specified for them was again the Fortune, which they had no doubt continuously occupied since its opening in 1600. The players named were ‘Thomas Downton, William Bird, Edward Juby, Samuell Rowle, Charles Massey, Humfrey Jeffs, Frank Grace, William Cartwright, Edward Colbrand, William Parr, William Stratford, Richard Gunnell, John Shanck, and Richard Price’. Possibly Price may be the Pryor of the 1610 list. Cartwright and Gunnell are new since that list, but Cartwright had been in The Battle of Alcazar and 1 Tamar Cham plots of 1601 and 1602. These two must be supposed to have taken the places of Thomas Towne and Antony Jeffes. Thomas Towne had enjoyed an annuity of £12 out of Alleyn’s manor of Dulwich from 28 October 1608 to 15 January 1612, but on 5 November 1612 ‘widow Towne’ is mentioned, and further evidence of his death is supplied by a letter from Charles Massey to Alleyn, not dated, but from internal evidence written not very long after the prince’s death, to which reference is made. Massey is in debt and wants £50. He offers two things as security. One is ‘that lyttell moete I have in the play hovsses’; from which it may be inferred that, like Downton, he had obtained an interest in the Fortune, although what the second house may have been can hardly be conjectured. The other is his interest under ‘the composisions betwene ovre compenye that if any one give over with consent of his fellowes, he is to receve three score and ten poundes (Antony Jefes hath had so much) if any on dye his widow or frendes whome he appoyntes it tow reseve fyfte poundes (Mres Pavie and Mres Tovne hath had the lyke)’. In order to be in a position to repay the loan at the end of the year he undertakes to get Mr. Jube to reserve ‘my gallery mony and my quarter of the hovse mony’ for the purpose, and should it prove at the end of six months that this will be insufficient, he will be prepared to surrender his whole share, with the exception of 13s. 4d. a week for household expenses. From this letter it may also be gathered that Antony Jeffes had retired, and apparently that Pavy, whose name is found in the plot of 2 Fortune’s Tennis, which I assign to 1602–3, had at some time become a sharer in the company. One other player, originally in 1597 a hired man, had evidently reached some prominence between that date and 1614. William Fennor, in the course of a rhyming controversy with John Taylor, makes the following boast of his histrionic talent:

And let me tell thee this to calme thy rage,

I chaleng’d Kendall on the Fortune stage;

And he did promise ‘fore an audience,

For to oppose me. Note the accidence:

I set up bills, the people throngd apace,

With full intention to disgrace, or grace;

The house was full, the trumpets twice had sounded,

And though he came not, I was not confounded,

But stept upon the stage, and told them this,

My aduerse would not come: not one did hisse,

But flung me theames: I then extempore

Did blot his name from out their memorie,

And pleasd them all, in spight of one to braue me,

Witnesse the ringing plaudits that they gaue me.

As the Elector Palatine’s men the company played at Court during the winter of 1613–14, twice before James and once before Charles. They were amongst the companies which performed irregularly in the Lent of 1615, and Humphrey Jeffes and Thomas Downton were summoned before the Privy Council to account for their misdoing. One of the irregular licences condemned by the Lord Chamberlain on 16 July 1616 was an exemplification of the patent of 1613, taken out by Charles Marshall, Humphrey Jeffes, and William Parr for provincial purposes.