[250] Fee-list in collection of Soc. of Antiquaries, cited by Collier, i. 161.
[251] Chamber Accounts in Collier, i. 161; Declared Accounts (Pipe Office), 541, m. 2v.
[252] Reading was a London player in 1550 (App. D, No. v). The Chamber Accounts for the first few years of Elizabeth show an annuity to a George Birch under a warrant of 7 Jan. 1560.
[253] Eight players of interludes at £3 6s. 8d. each are in the fee-lists (cf. vol. i, p. 29), Stowe MS. 571, f. 148 (c. 1575–80), Sloane MS. 3194, f. 38 (1585), Stowe MS. 571, f. 168 (c. 1587–90), Lansd. MS. 171, f. 250 (c. 1587–91), S. P. D. Eliz. ccxxi, f. 16 (c. 1588–93), H. O. 256 (c. 1598), and with the error of £3 6s. in Hargreave MS. 215, f. 21v (c. 1592–5), Lord Chamberlain’s Records, v. 33, f. 19v (1593), Stowe MS. 572, f. 35v (c. 1592–6), Harl. MS. 2078, f. 18v (c. 1592–6). The inaccurate Cott. MS. Titus, B. iii, f. 176 (c. 1585–93) gives two ‘Plaiers on Interludes’ at £3 6s. The normal entry recurs in the Jacobean Lansd. MS. 272, f. 27 (1614) and Stowe MS. 575, f. 24 (1616), but a group of the early part of the reign (Addl. MS. 35848, f. 19; Addl. MS. 38008, f. 58v; Soc. Antiq. MSS. 74, 75) have ‘Plaiers on the In lute’ or ‘on in Lutes’, at £3 6s. 8d. or £3 6s., which looks like an attempt to rationalize the Cotton MS. entry. And Stowe MS. 574, f. 16v, has ‘Players on Lute’ at £3 6s. 8d., which some one has corrected by inserting the normal entry. All this suggests that many copyists of fee-lists in the seventeenth century confused the post of interlude player with that of a lute player, and the former was therefore probably obsolete, and its fee no longer paid to the royal players of the day (cf. ch. x). I cannot agree with E. Law, Shakespeare a Groom, of the Chamber, 26, 64, that the interlude players survived under James as ‘mummers, who, perhaps, sang in a sort of recitative at masques and anti-masques’.
[254] Chamber Declared Accounts (Pipe Office), 541, passim, 542, m. 3; Collier, i. 236; Cunningham, xxvii. I do not know how long John Young continued to draw his Exchequer ‘annuity’, but presumably he had retired on it.
[255] Fleay, 43, says, ‘There was no specific company called the Queen’s players till 1583; it was a generic title applied to any company who prepared plays for the Queen’s amusement. In 1561 the players probably were the Earl of Leicester’s servants.’ I need hardly say that I do not accept this, which would not explain the disappearance of the ‘Queen’s’ from provincial records between 1573 and 1583. For another use of the same improvised theory by Mr. Fleay, cf. App. D, No. lxxv.
[256] Murray, i. 19, adds records from other towns, and A. Clark (10 N. Q. xi. 41) for Saffron Walden.
[257] App. D, No. xi.
[258] Nichols, Eliz. i. 280, ‘To my L. of Leyester’s men for a reward, 2s. 6d.’. Fleay, 18, says that the amount is too small to favour the supposition that these were players. But Elizabeth was at Saffron Walden at the time, and a present was made to the Master of the Revels of a podd of oysters costing no more than 3s. 6d. Probably Saffron Walden was an economical place, or the payment was only for some speech.
[259] Murray, i. 41.