The Elizabethan Stage, Vol. 2

by E. K. Chambers

The Chapel had contributed pretty continuously to Court drama for nearly a century. They now drop out of its story for about seventeen years.[121] In addition to the two plays of Lyly, one other of their recent pieces, Peele’s Arraignment of Paris, was printed in 1584. Two former Children, Henry Eveseed and John Bull, afterwards well known as a musician, became Gentlemen on 30 November 1585 and in January 1586 respectively.[122] Absence from Court did not entail an absolute cessation of dramatic activities. Performances by the Children are recorded at Ipswich and Norwich in 1586–7 and at Leicester before Michaelmas in 1591. There is, however, little to bear out the suggestion that the Chapel furnished the boys who played at Croydon, probably in the archbishop’s palace, during the summers of 1592 and 1593, other than the fact that the author of the play produced in 1593, Summer’s Last Will and Testament, was Thomas Nashe, who was also part author with Marlowe of Dido, one of two plays printed as Chapel plays in 1594. The extant text of the other play, The Wars of Cyrus, seems to be datable between 1587 and 1594. Hunnis died on 6 June 1597, and on 9 June 1597 Nathaniel Giles, ‘being before extraordinary’, was sworn as a regular Gentleman of the Chapel and Master of the Children. Giles, like Farrant, came ‘from Winsore’. Born about 1559, he was educated at Magdalen College, Oxford, and was appointed Clerk in St. George’s Chapel, Windsor, and Master of the Children on 1 October 1595. He earned a considerable reputation as a musician, and died in possession of both Masterships at the age of seventy-five on 24 January 1634.[123] His patent of appointment to the Chapel Royal is dated 14 July and his commission 15 July 1597.[124] They closely follow in terms those granted to Hunnis.[125]

Three years later the theatrical enterprise which had been dropped in 1584 was renewed by Giles, in co-operation with Henry Evans, who had been associated with its final stages. The locality chosen was again the Blackfriars, in the building reconstructed by James Burbadge in 1596, and then inhibited, on a petition of the inhabitants, from use as a public play-house. Of this, being ‘then or late in the tenure or occupacion of’ Henry Evans, Richard Burbadge gave him on 2 September 1600 a lease for twenty-one years from the following Michaelmas at a rent of £40.[126] According to Burbadge’s own account of the matter, Evans ‘intended then presentlye to erect or sett vp a companye of boyes ... in the same’, and knowing that the payment of the rent depended upon the possibility of maintaining a company ‘to playe playes and interludes in the said Playhowse in such sort as before tyme had bene there vsed’, he thought it desirable to take collateral security in the form of a bond for £400 from Evans and his son-in-law Alexander Hawkins.[127] Long after, the Blackfriars Sharers Papers of 1635 describe the lease as being to ‘one Evans that first sett vp the boyes commonly called the Queenes Majesties Children of the Chapell’.[128] I find nothing in this language to bear out the contention of Professor Wallace that Evans’s occupation of the Blackfriars extended back long before the date of his lease, and that, as already suggested by Mr. Fleay, the Chapel plays began again, not in 1600, but in 1597.[129] Burbadge speaks clearly of the setting up of the company as still an intention when the lease was drawn, and the reference to earlier plays in the house may either be to some use of it unknown to us between 1596 and 1600, or perhaps more probably to the performances by Evans and others before the time of James Burbadge’s reconstruction. Mr. Fleay’s suggestion rested, so far as I can judge, upon the evidence for the existence of Jonson’s Case is Altered as early as January 1599 and its publication as ‘acted by the children of the Blacke-friers’. But this publication was not until 1609 and represents a revision made not long before that date; and as will be seen the company did not use the name Children of the Blackfriars until about 1606. There is no reason to suppose that they were the original producers of the play. A confirmatory indication for 1600 as the date of the revival may be found in the appearance of the Chapel at Court, for the first time since 1584, on 6 January and 22 February 1601. On both occasions Nathaniel Giles was payee. The performance of 6 January, described by the Treasurer of the Chamber as ‘a showe with musycke and speciall songes’ was probably Jonson’s Cynthia’s Revels, which that description well fits; that of 22 February may have been the anonymous Contention between Liberality and Prodigality. Both of these were published in 1601. Jonson has preserved for us in his Folio of 1616 the list of the principal actors of Cynthia’s Revels, who were ‘Nat. Field, Sal. Pavy, Tho. Day, Ioh. Underwood, Rob. Baxter and Ioh. Frost’. The induction of the play is spoken by ‘Iacke’ and two other of the Children, of whom one, impersonating a spectator, complains that ‘the vmbrae, or ghosts of some three or foure playes, departed a dozen yeeres since, haue bin seene walking on your stage heere’. Liberality and Prodigality may be one of the old-fashioned plays here scoffed at, but it is probable that Jonson also had in mind Lyly’s Love’s Metamorphosis, which was published in 1601 as ‘first playd by the Children of Paules, and now by the Children of the Chappell’, and there may have been other revivals of the same kind. The company was included in the Lenten prohibition of 11 March 1601. Later in the year they produced Jonson’s Poetaster, containing raillery of the common stages, which stimulated a reply in Dekker’s Satiromastix, and which, together with their growing popularity, sufficiently explains the reference to the ‘aerie of children, little eyases’ in Hamlet.[130] The Poetaster was published in 1602 and the actor-list of the Folio of 1616 contains the names of ‘Nat. Field, Sal Pavy, Tho. Day, Ioh. Underwood, Wil. Ostler and Tho. Marton’. The full name of Pavy, who died after acting for three years, is given as Salathiel in the epigram written to his memory by Jonson; it appears as Salmon in a document which adds considerably to our knowledge both of the original constitution of the company and of the lines on which it was managed. This is a complaint to the Star Chamber by one Henry Clifton, Esq., of Toftrees, Norfolk, against a serious abuse of the powers of impressment entrusted under the royal commission to Nathaniel Giles.[131] Clifton alleged that Giles, in confederacy with Evans, one James Robinson and others, had set up a play-house for their own profit in the Blackfriars, and under colour of the commission had taken boys, not for the royal service in the Chapel Royal, but employment in acting interludes. He specified as so taken, ‘John Chappell, a gramer schole scholler of one Mr. Spykes schole neere Criplegate, London; John Motteram, a gramer scholler in the free schole at Westmi[n]ster; Nathan ffield, a scholler of a gramer schole in London, kepte by one Mr. Monkaster; Alvery Trussell, an apprentice to one Thomas Gyles; one Phillipp Pykman and Thomas Grymes, apprentices to Richard and Georg Chambers; Salmon Pavey, apprentice to one Peerce’. These were all children ‘noe way able or fitt for singing, nor by anie the sayd confederates endevoured to be taught to singe’. Finally they had made an attempt upon Clifton’s own son Thomas, a boy of thirteen, who had been seized by Robinson in Christ Church cloister on or about 13 December 1600, as he went from Clifton’s house in Great St. Bartholomew’s to the grammar school at Christ Church, and carried off to the play-house ‘to exercyse the base trade of a mercynary enterlude player, to his vtter losse of tyme, ruyne and disparagment’. Clifton went to the Blackfriars, where his son was ‘amongste a companie of lewde and dissolute mercenary players’, and made a protest; but Giles, Robinson, and Evans replied that ‘yf the Queene would not beare them furth in that accion, she should gett another to execute her comission for them’, that ‘they had aucthoritie sufficient soe to take any noble mans sonne in this land’, and that ‘were yt not for the benefitt they made by the sayd play howse, whoe would, should serve the Chappell with children for them’. Then they committed Thomas Clifton to the charge of Evans in his father’s presence, with a threat of a whipping if he was not obedient, and ‘did then and there deliuer vnto his sayd sonne, in moste scornefull disdaynfull and dispightfull manner, a scrolle of paper, conteyning parte of one of theire sayd playes or enterludes, and him, the sayd Thomas Clifton, comaunded to learne the same by harte’. Clifton appealed to Sir John Fortescue and got a warrant from him for the boy’s release after a day and a night’s durance. It was not, however, until a year later, on 15 December 1601, that he made his complaint.[132] During the following Christmas Giles brought the boys to Court on 6 and 10 January and 14 February 1602, and then with the hearing of the case in the Star Chamber during Hilary Term troubles began for the syndicate. Evans was censured ‘for his vnorderlie carriage and behauiour in takinge vp of gentlemens childeren against theire wills and to ymploy them for players and for other misdemeanors’, and it was decreed that all assurances made to him concerning the play-house or plays should be void and should be delivered up to be cancelled.[133] Evans, however, had apparently prepared himself against this contingency by assigning his lease to his son-in-law Alexander Hawkins on 21 October 1601. This at least is one explanation of a somewhat obscure transaction. According to Evans himself, the assignment was to protect Hawkins from any risk upon the bond given to Burbadge. On the other hand, there had already been negotiations for the sale of a half interest in the undertaking to three new partners, Edward Kirkham, William Rastall, and Thomas Kendall, and it was claimed later by Kirkham that the assignment to Hawkins had been in trust to reassign a moiety to these three, in return for a contribution of capital variously stated at from £300 to £600. No such reassignment was, however, carried out.[134] But although the lease from Burbadge was certainly not cancelled as a result of the Star Chamber decree, it probably did seem prudent that the original managers of the theatre should remain in the background for a time. Nothing more is heard of James Robinson, while the partnership between Evans and Hawkins on the one side and Kirkham, Rastall, and Kendall on the other was brought into operation under articles dated on 20 April 1602. For the observance of these Evans and Hawkins gave a bond of £200.[135] Kirkham, Rastall, and Kendall in turn gave Evans a bond of £50 as security for a weekly payment of 8s., ‘because after the said agreements made, the complainant [Kirkham] and his said parteners would at their directions haue the dieting and ordering of the boyes vsed about the plaies there, which before the said complainant had, and for the which he had weekely before that disbursed and allowed great sommes of monie’.[136]

Of the new managers, Rastall was a merchant and Kendall a haberdasher, both of London.[137] Kirkham has generally been assumed to be the Yeoman of the Revels, but of this there is not, so far as I know, any definite proof. The association did not prove an harmonious one. According to Evans, Kirkham and his fellows made false information against him to the Lord Chamberlain, as a result of which he was ‘comaunded by his Lordship to avoyd and leave the same’, had to quit the country, and lost nearly £300 by the charge he was put to and the negligence of Hawkins in looking after his profits.[138] This seems to have been in May 1602. Meanwhile the performances continued. The company did not appear at Court during the winter of 1602–3, but Sir Giles Goosecap and possibly Chapman’s Gentleman Usher were produced by them before the end of Elizabeth’s reign; and on 18 September 1602 a visit was paid to the theatre by Philipp Julius, Duke of Stettin-Pomerania, of which the following account is preserved in the journal of Frederic Gerschow, a member of his suite:[139]

‘Von dannen sind wir auf die Kinder-comoediam gangen, welche im Argument iudiciret eine castam viduam, war eine historia einer königlichen Wittwe aus Engellandt. Es hat aber mit dieser Kinder-comoedia die Gelegenheit: die Königin hält viel junger Knaben, die sich der Singekunst mit Ernst befleissigen müssen und auf allen Instrumenten lernen, auch dabenebenst studieren. Diese Knaben haben ihre besondere praeceptores in allen Künsten, insonderheit sehr gute musicos.’

‘Damit sie nun höfliche Sitten anwenden, ist ihnen aufgelegt, wöchentlich eine comoedia zu agiren, wozu ihnen denn die Königin ein sonderlich theatrum erbauet und mit köstlichen Kleidern zum Ueberfluss versorget hat. Wer solcher Action zusehen will, muss so gut als unserer Münze acht sundische Schillinge geben, und findet sich doch stets viel Volks auch viele ehrbare Frauens, weil nutze argumenta und viele schöne Lehren, als von andern berichtet, sollen tractiret werden; alle bey Lichte agiret, welches ein gross Ansehen macht. Eine ganze Stunde vorher höret man eine köstliche musicam instrumentalem von Orgeln, Lauten, Pandoren, Mandoren, Geigen und Pfeiffen, wie denn damahlen ein Knabe cum voce tremula in einer Basgeigen so lieblich gesungen, dass wo es die Nonnen zu Mailand ihnen nicht vorgethan, wir seines Gleichen auf der Reise nicht gehöret hatten.’

This report of a foreigner must not be pressed as if it were precise evidence upon the business organization of the Blackfriars. Yet it forms the main basis of the theory propounded by Professor Wallace that Elizabeth personally financed the Chapel plays and personally directed the limitation of the number of adult companies allowed to perform in London, as part of a deliberate scheme of reform, which her ‘definite notion of what the theatre should be’ had led her to plan—a theory which, I fear, makes his Children of the Chapel at Blackfriars misleading, in spite of its value as a review of the available evidence, old and new, about the company.[140] Professor Wallace supposes that Edward Kirkham, acting officially as Yeoman of the Revels, was Elizabeth’s agent, and that, even before he became a partner in the syndicate, he dieted the boys and supplied them with the ‘köstlichen Kleidern zum Ueberfluss’ mentioned by Gerschow, accounting for the expenditure either through the Revels Accounts or through some other unspecified accounts ‘yet to be discovered’.[141] Certainly no such expenditure appeared in the Revels Accounts, and no other official account with which Kirkham was concerned is known. It may be pointed out that, if we took Gerschow’s account as authoritative, we should have to suppose that Elizabeth provided the theatre building, which we know she did not, and I think it may be taken for granted that her payments for the Chapel were no more than those with which we are already quite familiar, namely the Master’s fee of £40 ‘pro exhibicione puerorum’, the board-wages of 6d. a day for each of twelve children, possibly the breakfast allowance of £16 a year and the largess of £9 13s. 4d. for high feasts, and the occasional rewards for actual performances. None of these, of course, passed through the Revels Office, and although this office may, as in the past, have helped to furnish the actual plays at Court, the cost of exercising in public remained a speculation of the Master and his backers, who had to look for recoupment and any possible profits to the sums received from spectators. If it is true, as Gerschow seems to say, that performances were only given on Saturdays, the high entrance charge of 1s. is fully explained. The lawsuits, of course, bear full evidence to the expenditure by the members of the syndicate upon the ‘setting forward’ of plays.[142] Nor is there any ground for asserting, as Professor Wallace does, that there were two distinct sets of children, one lodged in or near the palace for chapel purposes proper, and the other kept at the Blackfriars for plays.[143] It is true that Clifton charged Giles with impressing boys who could not sing, but Gerschow’s account proves that there were others at the Blackfriars who could sing well enough, and it would be absurd to suppose that there was one trained choir for the stage and another for divine service. Doubtless, however, the needs of the theatre made it necessary to employ, by agreement or impressment, a larger number of boys than the twelve borne on the official establishment.[144] And that boys whose voices had broken were retained in the theatrical company may be inferred from the report about 1602 that the Dowager Countess of Leicester had married ‘one of the playing boyes of the chappell’.[145] I cannot, finally, agree with Professor Wallace in assuming that the play attended by Elizabeth at the Blackfriars on 29 December 1601 was necessarily a public one at the theatre; much less that it was ‘only one in a series of such attendances’. She had dined with Lord Hunsdon at his house in the Blackfriars. The play may have been in his great chamber, or he may have borrowed the theatre next door for private use on an off-day. And the actors may even more probably have been his own company than the Chapel boys.[146]

The appointment of a new Lord Chamberlain by James I seems to have enabled Evans to return to England. He found theatrical affairs in a bad way, owing to the plague of 1603, and ‘speach and treatie’ arose between him and Burbadge about a possible surrender of his lease.[147] By December, however, things looked brighter. Evans did some repairs to the Blackfriars, and the enterprise continued.[148] Like the adult companies, the partners secured direct royal protection under the following patent of 4 February 1604:[149]

De licencia speciali pro Eduardo Kirkham et aliis pro le Revell domine Regine.

Iames by the grace of God &c. To all Mayors Shiriffes Justices of Peace Baliffes Constables and to all other our officers mynisters and lovinge Subiectes to whome theis presentes shall come, greeting. Whereas the Queene our deerest wief hath for her pleasure and recrea[~c]on when she shall thinke it fit to have any playes or shewes appoynted her servauntes Edward Kirkham Alexander Hawkyns Thomas Kendall and Robert Payne to provyde and bring vppe a convenient nomber of Children, whoe shalbe called children of her Revelles, knowe ye that we have appointed and authorized and by theis presentes doe authorize and appoynte the said Edward Kirkham Alexander Hawkins Thomas Kendall and Robert Payne from tyme to tyme to provide keepe and bring vppe a convenient nomber of Children, and them to practize and exercise in the quality of playinge by the name of Children of the Revells to the Queene within the Black-fryers in our Cytie of London, or in any other convenient place where they shall thinke fit for that purpose. Wherefore we will and commaunde [you] and everie of you to whome it shall appertayne to permytt her said Servauntes to keepe a convenient nomber of Children by the name of Children of her Revells and them to exercise in the quality of playing according to her pleasure. Provided allwaies that noe such Playes or Shewes shalbee presented before the said Queene our wief by the said Children or by them any where publiquelie acted but by the approbacion and allowaunce of Samuell Danyell, whome her pleasure is to appoynt for that purpose. And theis our lettres Patentes shalbe your sufficient warraunte in this behalfe. In witnes whereof &c., witnes our self at Westminster the fourth day of February.

per breve de priuato sigillo &c.