[695] The schedule attached to a warrant of 1633 (Jahrbuch, xlvi. 97) appears to have been a bill signed by the Master of the Revels.
[696] Greg, Henslowe Papers, 109; but his note is a slip.
[697] Cf. ch. xiii (Chamberlain's).
[698] Sydney Papers, ii. 86 (30 Jan. 1598), 'My Lord Compton, my Lord Cobham, Sir Walter Rawley, my Lord Southampton, doe severally feast Mr. Secretary before he depart, and have plaies and banquets. My Lady Darby, my Lady Walsingham, Mrs. Anne Russell, are of the company, and my Lady Rawley'; ii. 90 (15 Feb. 1598), 'Sir Gilley Meiricke made at Essex House yesternight a very great supper. There were at yt, my Ladys Lester, Northumberland, Bedford, Essex, Rich; and my Lordes of Essex, Rutland, Monjoy, and others. They had 2 plaies, which kept them up till 1 a clocke after midnight'; ii. 175 (8 March 1600), 'All this Weeke the Lords haue bene in London, and past away the Tyme in Feasting and Plaies; for Vereiken dined vpon Wednesday, with my Lord Treasurer, who made hym a Roiall Dinner; vpon Thursday my Lord Chamberlain feasted hym, and made hym very great, and a delicate Dinner, and there in the After Noone his Plaiers acted, before Vereiken, Sir John Old Castell, to his Great Contentment'. It seems that, for their patron, the Chamberlain's men would give up an afternoon.
[699] S. P. D. Jac. I, xix. 12 (1606); Birch, i. 243; Winwood, iii. 461. A gallant might also have his private play at night in a tavern; cf. Nashe, Lenten Stuffe (1599, Works, iii. 148), 'To London againe he will, to reuell it, and haue two playes in one night, inuite all the Poets and Musitions to his chamber the next morning'; A Mad World, my Masters, v. i. 78, 'a right Mitre supper;—a play and all'.
[700] Aphrodysial, v. 5, cited by Reynolds, Percy, 258.
[701] Machyn, 222, 290, notes a play, either in the Guildhall or in that of the Lord Mayor's company, on 6 Jan. 1560, and a play at the Barber Surgeons' feast on 10 Aug. 1562. The Pewterers collected 'playe pence' at their 'yemandrie feast' about 1563 (C. Welch, Pewterers, i. 233). Recorder Fleetwood saw a play at a dinner with the outgoing sheriffs on 29 Sept. 1575 (Hatfield MSS. ii. 116; dated 1573 in error in Murdin, ii. 259, and Nichols, Eliz. i. 357).
[702] They are fully treated for the sixteenth century by F. S. Boas, University Drama in the Tudor Age (1914), and more briefly for the whole period, with a valuable bibliography, by the same writer, in C. H. vi. 293. I have recorded the extant plays, English and Latin, in App. K.
[703] Ch. xxiii, s.v. Beaumont; Inderwick, Inner Temple Records, i. lxv, 219; ii. xlix, 23 sqq., 56, 64. A payment of 20s. 'to the players' at the Christmas of 1615 was probably, in view of the amount, for musicians. The earlier account-books are not preserved. On the plays, not necessarily professional, of the 1561-2 Christmas, cf. ch. xxiii, s.v. Brooke.
[704] Gesta Grayorum (M. S. R.), 22, 23. R. J. Fletcher, The Pension Book of Gray's Inn (1901), prints entries of payments for 'the play at Shrove-tyde' 1581, of which nothing more is known, and 'the play in Michaelmas terme' and 'the Tragedie' in 1587-8, in which year the Inn gave Catiline at home before Lord Burghley on 16 Jan. (M. S. C. i. 179) and The Misfortunes of Arthur at court on 28 Feb. Gascoigne's Supposes and Jocasta were both produced at Gray's Inn in 1566-7. The Inn was to have entertained the Duke of Bracciano with 'shewes' at Christmas 1600-1, but he left too soon (Chamberlain, 99; Camden (tr.), 535).