‘Edmond Tylney Esquire Master of the office being sente for to the Courte by Letter from Mr. Secreatary dated the xth of Marche 1582. To choose out a companie of players for her majestie.’[299]
The date then was 10 March 1583, and the business was in the hands of Sir Francis Walsingham. Lord Chamberlain Sussex, to whom it would naturally have fallen, was ill in the previous September[300] and died on the following 9 June. Walsingham’s agency in the matter is confirmed in the account of the formation of the company inserted by Edmund Howes in the 1615 and 1631 editions of Stowe’s Annales:
‘Comedians and stage-players of former time were very poor and ignorant in respect of these of this time: but being now grown very skilful and exquisite actors for all matters, they were entertained into the service of divers great lords: out of which companies there were twelve of the best chosen, and, at the request of Sir Francis Walsingham, they were sworn the queens servants and were allowed wages and liveries as grooms of the chamber: and until this yeare 1583, the queene had no players. Among these twelve players were two rare men, viz. Thomas Wilson, for a quicke, delicate, refined, extemporall witt, and Richard Tarleton, for a wondrous plentifull pleasant extemporall wit, he was the wonder of his time. He lieth buried in Shoreditch church. [In a note] He was so beloved that men use his picture for their signs.’[301]
Howes is not altogether accurate. ‘Thomas’ is obviously a mistake for ‘Robert’ Wilson. Elizabeth had maintained players before, the Interluders, although they had cut little figure in the dramatic history of the reign, and the last of them had died in 1580. Dr. Greg thinks that the players were not appointed as grooms of the Chamber, on the ground that their names do not appear in a list of these officers appended to a warrant of 8 November 1586.[302] But Tarlton is described as ‘ordenary grome off her majestes chamber’ in the record of his graduation as a master of fence in 1587, and both he and his ‘fellow’, William Johnson, are described as ‘grooms of her majesties chamber’ in his will of 1588. Their absence from Dr. Greg’s list is probably due to their treatment as a special class of grooms of the chamber in ordinary without fee, who were not called upon to perform the ordinary duties of the office, such as helping to watch the palace.[303] That they had liveries, which were red coats, is borne out by the particular mention of the fact that they were not wearing them, in the depositions concerning a very untoward event which took place in the first few months of their service. On the afternoon of 15 June 1583 they were playing at the Red Lion in Norwich. A dispute as to payment arose between a servant of one Mr. Wynsdon and Singer, who, in a black doublet and with a player’s beard on, was acting as gatekeeper. Tarlton and Bentley, who was playing the duke, came off the stage, and Bentley broke the offender’s head with the hilt of his sword. The man fled, pursued by Singer with an arming-sword which he took off the stage, and by Henry Browne, a servant of Sir William Paston. Both of them struck him, and one of the blows, but it was not certain whose, proved mortal.[304]
Several other places, besides Norwich, received a visit from the Queen’s men during the first summer of their existence. In April they were at Bristol, on 9 July at Cambridge, and between 24 July and 29 September at Leicester. Their travels also extended to Gloucester, Aldeburgh, Nottingham, and Shrewsbury.[305] In the winter they returned to London, and on 26 November the Privy Council wrote to the Lord Mayor to bespeak for them permission to play in the City and the liberties upon week-days until Shrovetide. The City accordingly licensed them to play at the Bull and the Bell, but with unwelcome limitations, for on 1 December it was necessary for Walsingham to write a personal letter, explaining that it was not the intention of the Council that the licence to play should be confined to holidays. The City record gives the names of the twelve members of the company as Robert Wilson, John Dutton, Richard Tarlton, John Laneham, John Bentley, Thobye Mylles, John Towne, John Synger, Leonall Cooke, John Garland, John Adams, and William Johnson. The company made its initial appearance at Court on 26 December, and played again on 29 December, and on 3 March 1584. Their public performances probably continued through the spring, but in June there were disturbances in and around the Middlesex theatres, and the City obtained leave from the Council to suppress plays. The Queen’s submitted to an injunction from William Fleetwood, the Recorder; and their leader advised him to send for the owner of the Theatre, who was Lord Hunsdon’s man, and bind him. They travelled again, and are found in 1583–4 at Bath and Marlborough, and in October or November at Dover. When the winter came on, they once more approached the Council and requested a renewal of the previous year’s privilege, submitting articles in which they pointed out that the time of their service was drawing near, and that the season of the year was past to play at any of the houses outside the City. They also asked for favourable letters to the Middlesex justices. The City opposed the concession, and begged that, if it were granted, the number and names of the Queen’s men might be set out in the warrant, complaining that in the previous year, when toleration was granted to this company alone, all the playing-places were filled with men calling themselves the Queen’s players. The records do not show whether the Council assented.[306] The company appeared four times at Court, giving Phillyda and Corin on 26 December, Felix and Philiomena on 3 January 1585, Five Plays in One on 6 January, and an antic play and a comedy on 23 February. They had prepared a fifth performance, of Three Plays in One, for 21 February, but it was not called for. Mr. Fleay has conjectured that the Five Plays in One and the Three Plays in One may have been the two parts of Tarlton’s Seven Deadly Sins.[307] The payment for this winter’s plays was made to Robert Wilson.
There is no evidence that the company were travelling in 1585. They were at Court again on 26 December and on 1 January and 13 February 1586. During 1586 they were at Maidstone, in July at Bristol, on 22 August and later at Faversham, and before 29 September at Leicester. In 1585–6 they were also at Coventry. On 26 December 1586 and on 1 and 6 January and 28 February 1587 they were at Court, and in the same January a correspondent of Walsingham’s names them amongst other companies then playing regularly in the City (App. D, No. lxxviii). During 1586–7 they were at Bath, Worcester, Canterbury, and Stratford-on-Avon, whence Malone thought that they might have enlisted Shakespeare.[308] They were at Bath again on 13 July 1587, and at Aldeburgh on 20 May and 19 July. Before 29 September they were at Leicester, on 9 September at York, where it is recorded that they ‘cam in her Majesties lyvereys’, twice in September at Coventry, and at Aldeburgh on 16 December. They were at Court on 26 December 1587 and on 6 January and 18 February 1588.
A subsidy list of 30 June 1588 shows that Tarlton, Laneham, Johnson, Towne, Adams, Garland, John Dutton, Singer, and Cooke were then still household players.[309] It can, perhaps, hardly be assumed that the whole of the company is here represented. Mills, Wilson, and Bentley may have dropped out since 1583. But one would have expected to find the name of Laurence Dutton beside that of John, as he was certainly a Queen’s man by 1589. Knell also acted with Tarlton in The Famous Victories of Henry the Fifth, and must have belonged to the company. He also may have been dead by 1588. And this must certainly be the case if he is the William Knell whose widow Rebecca John Heminges married on 10 March 1588. There is some reason to suppose that Heminges himself joined the Queen’s men, perhaps in right of his wife. The composition of the list of 1583 generally bears out the statement of Howes, that the Queen’s men were selected as the best out of the companies of divers great lords, for Wilson, Laneham, and Johnson belonged to Leicester’s in 1572, Adams to Sussex’s in 1576, and Dutton, after a chameleon past, to Oxford’s in 1580. Mr. Fleay, who did not know either the list of 1583 or that of 1588, declares that the original members of the company included James Burbadge and William Slaughter, and probably John Perkyn.[310] Of these William Slaughter is merely what the philologists would call a ‘ghost’-name, for there is no evidence that any such actor ever existed.[311] Evidently James Burbadge did not join the Queen’s men. Probably Mr. Fleay was biased by his knowledge that these men acted at the Theatre, which was Burbadge’s property. But this could prove nothing, as the relations between particular companies and particular theatres were much less permanent than Mr. Fleay is apt to suppose. The Queen’s seem to have been acting at the Theatre when Fleetwood suppressed them in June 1584, but the owner of the house, who can hardly be any other than James Burbadge, is specifically described as Lord Hunsdon’s man, which of course does not necessarily signify that he was a player at all. Moreover, it is clear from the official correspondence of the following autumn, not only that, as we know from other sources, the companies regularly moved in from the suburban houses to the City inn-yards at the approach of winter, but also that the Queen’s in particular had in the winter of 1583 dispersed themselves for their public performances over various play-places. The view that they did not exclusively attach themselves to Burbadge’s, or to any other one theatre, is further borne out by the indications in the Jests of Tarlton, which there is no reason to reject, however apocryphal they may be in detail, as evidence of the theatrical conditions under which the famous mime appeared. The Jests frequently speak of Tarlton as a Queen’s man and never mention any other company in connexion with him.[312] And, as it happens, they record performances at the Curtain,[313] the Bell,[314] and the Bull,[315] but none at the Theatre. Nashe, however, tells us that Tarlton made jests of Richard Harvey and his Astrological Discourse of 1583 there;[316] and an entry in the Stationers’ Register makes it possible to add that shortly before his death he appeared at the Bel Savage.[317] The stage-keeper in Bartholomew Fair (1614), Ind. 37, gives us a reminiscence of a scene between Tarlton and John Adams, ‘I am an Asse! I! and yet I kept the Stage in Master Tarletons time, I thanke my starres. Ho! and that man had liu’d to haue play’d in Bartholmew Fayre, you should ha’ seene him ha’ come in, and ha’ beene coozened i’ the Cloath-quarter, so finely! And Adams, the Rogue, ha’ leap’d and caper’d vpon him, and ha’ dealt his vermine about, as though they had cost him nothing. And then a substantiall watch to ha’ stolne in vpon ’hem, and taken ’hem away, with mistaking words, as the fashion is, in the Stage-practice.’
Tarlton’s own talent probably ran more to ‘jigs’ and ‘themes’ than to the legitimate drama. But the palmy days of the Queen’s company were those that intervened between its foundation in 1583 and his death on 3 September 1588. To it belonged the men whom such an actor of the next generation as Thomas Heywood could remember as the giants of the past,[318] and whose reputation Edward Alleyn’s friends were ready to back him to excel.[319] From 1588 the future of the stage lay with Alleyn and the Admiral’s men and Marlowe, and it may reasonably be supposed that the Queen’s men were hard put to it to hold their own against their younger rivals. Adams probably survived Tarlton, and his name appears to be traceable as that of the clowns in A Looking Glass for London and England (c. 1590) and James IV (c. 1591). In 1587–8 the Queen’s visited Coventry and Exeter, and in 1588 Dover, and on two occasions Faversham. On 19 July and 14 August they were at Bath. The Bath accounts for this year also show a payment ‘to the quenes men that were tumblers’. Owing to Tarlton’s death or to some other reason, the Queen’s men prolonged their travels far into the winter. On 31 October they were at the Earl of Derby’s house at New Park, Lancashire; on 6 November ‘certen of’ them were at Leicester; on 10 December they were at Norwich and on 17 December at Ipswich. But they reached the Court in time for the performance on 26 December, with which they seem to have had the prerogative of opening the Christmas season, and appeared again on 9 February. They must have had some share in the Martin Marprelate controversy, which raged during 1589. In the previous year, indeed, Martin was able to claim Tarlton as an ally who had ‘taken’ Simony ‘in Don John of London’s cellar’, and was himself accused of borrowing his ‘foolery’ from Laneham. But when the bishops determined to meet the Puritans with literary weapons like their own, they naturally turned to the Queen’s men amongst others. About April 1589 A Whip for an Ape bids Martin’s grave opponents to ‘let old Lanam lash him with his rimes’, and although it cannot be assumed that, if the Maygame of Martinism was in fact played at the Theatre, it was the Queen’s men who played it, Martin’s Month’s Minde records in August the chafing of the Puritans at players ‘whom, saving their liveries (for indeed they are hir Majesty’s men ...) they call rogues’. Influence was brought to bear to suppress the anti-Martinist plays. A pamphlet of October notes that Vetus Comoedia has been ‘long in the country’; and this accords with the fact that the provincial performances of the Queen’s men began at an unusually early date in 1589. They are found at Gloucester on 19 April, at Leicester on 20 May, at Ipswich on 27 May, at Aldeburgh on 30 May, and at Norwich on 3 June. On 5 July they were at the Earl of Derby’s at Lathom, and on 6 and 7 September at another house of the Earl’s at Knowsley. On 22 September Lord Scrope wrote from Carlisle to William Asheby, the English ambassador in Scotland, that they had been for ten days in that town. He had heard from Roger Asheton of the King’s desire that they should visit Scotland, and had sought them out from ‘the furthest parte of Langkeshire’.[320] One would be glad to know whether they did in fact visit Scotland. In any case they were back in England and at Bath by November. During 1588–9 they were also at Reading, at Nottingham, and twice at Coventry. Both the Nottingham records and those of Leicester furnish evidence that for travelling purposes they divided themselves into two companies. At Leicester the town account for 1588–9 shows ‘certen of her Maiests playars’ as coming on 6 November, and ‘others moe of her Mayestyes playars’ as coming on 20 May; that of Nottingham for the same year has an entry of ‘Symons and his companie, being the Quenes players’ and another of ‘the Quenes players, the two Duttons and others’. The arrangement was of course natural enough, seeing that even in London the Queen’s men were sufficiently numerous to occupy more than one inn-yard. Laurence Dutton was evidently by now a member of the company with his brother John. It is to be presumed that Symons is the John Symons who on not less than five occasions presented ‘activities’ at Court, in 1582–3 with Strange’s (q.v.), in 1585 with Oxford’s, in 1586 with ‘Mr. Standleyes boyes’, in 1587–8 with a company under his own name, and in 1588–9 either with the Admiral’s or possibly with the Queen’s itself.
Doubtless the incorporation of Symons into the Queen’s service explains the appearance of the Queen’s tumblers at Bath in 1589. Performances at Court, for which John Dutton and John Laneham received payment, took place on 26 December 1589 and 1 March 1590. During 1589–90 the company were at Coventry, Ludlow, Nottingham, Bridgnorth, and Faversham, on 22 April 1590 at Norwich, on 24 June under the leadership of ‘Mr. Dutton’ at Knowsley, and on 30 October at Leicester. Acrobatic feats still formed a part of their repertory, and in these they had the assistance of a Turkish rope-dancer.[321] There were further Court performances on 26 December and on 1, 3, and 6 January, and 14 February 1591. It is to be noted that payment was made for the play of 1 January to ‘John Laneham and his companye her maiesties players’ and for the rest by a separate warrant to ‘Lawrence Dutton and John Dutton her maiesties players and there companye’; and that this distinction indicates some further development of the tendency to bifurcation already observed may be gathered from a study of the provincial records for 1590–1. On the very day of the performance of 14 February Queen’s men were also at Southampton, and the form of the entry indicates that they were there playing in conjunction with the Earl of Sussex’s men. This was the case also at Coventry on 24 March and at Gloucester during 1590–1.[322] At Ipswich during the same year there are two entries, of ‘the Quenes players’ on 15 May 1591 and of ‘another company of the Quenes players’ on 18 May. Obviously two groups were travelling this year and one had strengthened itself by a temporary amalgamation with Sussex’s. Perhaps the normal combination was restored when the two groups found themselves on the same road at the end of May, for Queen’s men are recorded alone at Faversham on 2 June 1591, at Wirkburn on 18 August, and at Coventry on 24 August and 20 October.
It was probably during this summer that Greene, having sold Orlando Furioso to the Queen’s men for twenty nobles, resold it ‘when they were in the country’ to the Admiral’s for as much more. The winter of 1591–2 marks a clear falling-off in the position of the company at Court, since they were only called upon to give one performance, on 26 December, as against six assigned to Lord Strange’s men, with whom at this date Alleyn and the Admiral’s men appear to have been in combination. Yet it was still possible for the City, writing to Archbishop Whitgift on 25 February 1592, to suggest that Elizabeth’s accustomed recreation might be sufficiently served, without the need for public plays, ‘by the privat exercise of hir Mats own players in convenient place’.[323] That they were again making use of the Theatre may perhaps be inferred from a passage in Nashe’s Summer’s Last Will and Testament of the following autumn, in which a Welshman is said to ‘goe ae Theater, and heare a Queenes Fice, and he make hur laugh, and laugh hur belly-full’.[324] During 1591–2 they were at Nottingham, Coventry, Stratfordon-Avon, twice at Aldeburgh, and twice at Bath. In 1592 they were at Rochester, on 27 May at Norwich, before 29 September at Leicester, and early in September at Chesterton close to Cambridge. Here they came into conflict with the authorities of Cambridge University, who were apprehensive of infection from the crowds assembled at Sturbridge fair, and forbade them to play. Encouraged by Lord North and by the constables of Chesterton, they disobeyed, set up their bills upon the college gates, and gave their performance. It is interesting to note that ‘one Dutton’ was ‘a principale’, and to remember that, twelve years before, the Duttons had gone to Cambridge as Lord Oxford’s men and had been refused permission to play by the University authorities.[325] The outcome of the present encounter was a formal protest by the Vice-Chancellor and Heads of Houses to the Privy Council for which they requested Burghley’s support as Chancellor of the University. After a further appeal about a year later, they succeeded in obtaining a confirmation of their privileges.[326] Another letter from the University to their Chancellor, written on 4 December 1592, is of a different character. Its object is to excuse themselves from accepting an invitation conveyed through the Vice-Chamberlain to present an English comedy before Elizabeth at Christmas. Sir Thomas Heneage appears to have given it as a reason for his request ‘that her Maiesties owne servantes, in this time of infection, may not disport her Highnes wth theire wonted and ordinary pastimes’.[327]