iii. English Players on the Continent

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

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

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

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

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

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

Vostre tres affecsionné à vous fayre plaisir et sarvis,

C. Howard.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Your poor frend to command Richard Jones.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Finally, on 3 October:

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

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

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