The Elizabethan Stage, Vol. 2

by E. K. Chambers

It is possible that those of the fifth Earl of Derby’s men who did not take service with the Lord Chamberlain, passed into a provincial period of existence under his successor, the sixth Earl. A company bearing his name was at Norwich on 15 September 1594, at Dunwich in 1594–5 and 1595–6, at Coventry, Bath, and Stratford in 1595–6, at Leicester between October and December 1596, at Bath in 1596–7, at Maldon in 1597, at Coventry twice in 1597–8, at Leicester in 1597–8, and between October and December 1598, at Wollaton (Percival Willoughby’s) on 7 October 1599, and at Leicester again on 16 October 1599. Letters of 30 June 1599 relate that the Earl of Derby was then ‘busy penning comedies for the common players’, and it is perhaps natural to suppose that his own company were chosen as the exponents of his art.[351] This perhaps explains its appearance at Court during the winters of 1599–1600 and 1600–1. Four performances were given, on 3 and 5 February 1600 and 1 and 6 January 1601, and for these Robert Browne, who had been both with Worcester’s men and the Admiral’s, but much of whose dramatic career had been spent in Germany, was the payee. In an undated letter to Sir Robert Cecil, Lady Derby writes, ‘Being importuned by my Lord to intreat your favor that his man Browne, with his companye, may not be bared from ther accoustomed plaing, in maintenance wherof they have consumde the better part of ther substance, if so vaine a matter shall not seame troublesum to you, I could desier that your furderance might be a meane to uphold them, for that my Lord taking delite in them, it will kepe him from moer prodigall courses’.[352] To this company are doubtless to be assigned Edward IV, perhaps by Heywood (1600, S. R. 28 August 1599), and the anonymous Trial of Chivalry (1605, S. R. 4 December 1604), both of which are credited to Derby’s men on their title-pages. It again becomes provincial and is traceable at Norwich on 27 February and 9 June 1602, at Ipswich on 4 June 1602, and thereafter up to 1618, chiefly at Coventry and at Gawthorpe Hall, the house of Derby’s neighbours, the Shuttleworths.[353]

John Taylor, the water-poet, returned from his journey to Scotland in 1618 at the Maidenhead Inn, Islington, and here after supper on 14 October ‘we had a play of the Life and Death of Guy of Warwick, played by the Right Honourable the Earl of Derby his men’. Presumably this was Day and Dekker’s play entered on the Stationers’ Register in 1619, which Mr. Bullen declines to identify with the Guy of Warwick published as ‘by B. J.’ in 1661.[354]

xviii. THE EARL OF PEMBROKE’S MEN

Henry Herbert, s. of William, 1st Earl of Pembroke; nat. c. 1534; succ. as 2nd Earl, 17 Mar. 1570; m. (1) Catherine, d. of Henry Grey, Duke of Suffolk, 21 May 1553, (2) Catherine, d. of George Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, 17 Feb. 1563, (3) Mary, d. of Sir Henry Sidney, c. Apr. 1577; President of Wales, 1586; residences, Baynard’s Castle, London, Wilton House, Wilts., Ludlow Castle, &c.; ob. 9 Jan. 1601.

[Bibliographical Note.—Halliwell-Phillipps collected provincial records and other notes on Pembroke’s men in A Budget of Notes and Memoranda (1880). The Bill, Answer, and Replication in Shaw et al. v. Langley (1597–8, Court of Requests) are in C. W. Wallace, The Swan Theatre and the Earl of Pembroke’s Servants (1911, E. S. xliii. 340).]

There is an isolated record of a Pembroke’s company at Canterbury in 1575–6, hardly to be regarded as continuous with that which makes its appearance in the last decade of the century. Fleay, 87, puts the origin of the latter in 1589, and supposes it to be a continuation of Worcester’s men after the death of their original patron in 1589, and to be the company ridiculed by Nashe (iii. 324) for playing Delphrigus and The King of the Fairies, in his preface to Greene’s Menaphon (1589). But this Worcester’s company is not in fact traceable during 1585–9, and Fleay’s theory is only based on the allusion to Hamlet in the same preface (iii. 315), and the assumption that the Ur-Hamlet, like some other plays, passed to the Chamberlain’s from Pembroke’s, whereas it may just as well have passed to them from Strange’s. As a matter of fact, there is no mention of Pembroke’s before 1592 and no reason to suppose that it had an earlier existence. It will be well to detail the few facts of its history before attempting anything in the nature of conjecture. It was at Leicester in the last three months of 1592 and made its only appearances at Court on 26 December 1592 and 6 January 1593. In the following summer it travelled, and is found at York in June, at Rye in July, and in 1592–3 at Ludlow, Shrewsbury, Coventry, Bath, and Ipswich. But it had little success. Henslowe wrote to Alleyn on 28 September, ‘As for my lorde a Penbrockes w^ch you desier to knowe wheare they be they ar all at home and hausse ben this v or sixe weackes for they cane not saue ther carges w^th trauell as I heare & weare fayne to pane ther parell for ther carge’.[355] About the same time three of their plays came to the booksellers’ hands. These were Marlowe’s Edward the Second (1594, S. R. 6 July 1593), The Taming of A Shrew (1594, S. R. 2 May 1594), and The True Tragedy of Richard Duke of York (1595). Probably the play to which this last is a sequel, 1 Contention of York and Lancaster (1594, S. R. 12 March 1594) was also theirs, although the name of the company is not on the title-page. It is on the title-page of Titus Andronicus (1594), and its position suggests that the play passed to them from Strange’s and from them before publication to Sussex’s. All these plays, with the exception of Edward II, seem to have been worked upon by Shakespeare, and probably they ultimately became part of the stock of the Chamberlain’s men. These men were playing Titus Andronicus and The Taming of The Shrew in June 1594, and that they also owned The Contention in its revised form of 2, 3 Henry VI is suggested both by its inclusion in the First Folio and by the reference in the Epilogue to Henry V not only to the loss of France but also to the bleeding of England ‘which oft our stage hath shown’.

I now enter a region of conjecture. It seems to me, on the whole, likely that the origin of Pembroke’s men is to be explained by the special conditions of the plague-years 1592–3, and was due to a division for travelling purposes of the large London company formed by the amalgamation of Strange’s and the Admiral’s. Such a division had been foreshadowed as likely to be necessary in the petition sent by Strange’s men to the Privy Council during the summer of 1592 or earlier, and may actually have become necessary when, after all, the plague rendered travelling imperative. If this suggestion is well founded, it becomes not difficult to explain some of the transferences of acting rights in certain plays which seem to have taken place. Thus Strange’s may have handed over Titus Andronicus in its earlier form of Titus and Vespasian to Pembroke’s for the travels of 1593, and may also have handed over The Contention of York and Lancaster, if that was originally theirs, as is suggested by their production of 1 Henry VI, which belongs to the same closely related series. This opens up a more important line of speculation. It is usual to assume that one of the members of Strange’s from 1592 or earlier until its reconstitution as the Chamberlain’s in 1594 was William Shakespeare, and there is no reason to doubt his authorship at any rate of the Talbot scenes, which we know from Nashe to have been staged as part of 1 Henry VI in 1592. At the same time, the names of at least seventeen of Strange’s and the Admiral’s men in 1590–3 are otherwise known, and his is not one of them, and in particular his prominence amongst the Chamberlain’s men from the very beginning renders it extremely unlikely that, if he had been a member of the company in 1593, he would not have been mentioned in the Privy Council warrant of 6 May. Further, it seems to me impossible to resist the inference that the attribution to him of Titus Andronicus both by Francis Meres in 1598 and in the First Folio of 1623 can only be explained by his revision under that name of Titus and Vespasian, and that this was for the second production of the play as ‘ne’ for Henslowe by Sussex’s men on 24 January 1594. There is, therefore, really some basis for the suggestion made long ago by Halliwell-Phillipps that he is to be looked for during these years in Pembroke’s company until its collapse and then in Sussex’s, and that it was from this rather than directly from Strange’s that he went to the Chamberlain’s.[356] On the other hand, it may be that for a time he was not attached as an actor to any company at all. It is possible that he took advantage of the plague-interval to travel in Italy and only resumed the regular exercise of his profession when the Chamberlain’s company was formed. In any event, it must have been he who revised The Contention as 2, 3 Henry VI, and the close stylistic relation of these plays to 1 Henry VI makes it probable that the work on all three belongs to about the same date. The limitations of conjecture on so intricate a question are obvious, but I can conceive the order of events as being somewhat as follows. Shakespeare’s first dramatic job, which earned him the ill will of Greene, was the writing or re-writing of 1 Henry VI for Strange’s, in the early spring of 1592. During the winter of 1592–3 he revised The Contention for Pembroke’s and completed the series of his early histories with Richard III, and, as I am inclined to suspect, also an Ur-Henry VIII. He also wrote The Jealous Comedy or Comedy of Errors for Strange’s. In the summer of 1593 Sussex’s took over the plays of the bankrupt Pembroke’s, including the Shakespearian histories Titus and Vespasian and The Taming of A Shrew. Some at least of these Pembroke’s had themselves derived in 1592 or 1593 from Strange’s. During the winter of 1593–4 Sussex’s played either Richard III or Henry VIII as Buckingham, and also Titus and Vespasian revised for them by Shakespeare as Titus Andronicus. Alarmed at the further inhibition of plays in February, they allowed the revised Titus and unrevised texts of The Taming of A Shrew and The Contention to get into the hands of the booksellers. Whether Shakespeare had already revised A Shrew or did so later for the Chamberlain’s (q.v.) I am uncertain. Finally, by the transfer of their plays to the Chamberlain’s men, who at once revived A Shrew and Titus Andronicus, and by the incorporation of Strange’s men in the same company, the original stock of Strange’s plays, as distinct from the Admiral’s, came together in the same hands once more. On the assumption that Shakespeare never left Strange’s, it is difficult to explain either the fortunes of Titus Andronicus, or the absence from the lists of Strange’s plays in Henslowe’s diary of Richard III, which must have been written about 1592–4. The silence as regards Strange’s both of the Court records and of Henslowe’s diary during the winter of 1593–4 makes it unlikely that they were in London, and they would surely not produce a new play in the country.

Nothing further is heard of a Pembroke’s company for three or four years.[357] But in 1597 one appeared in London about which we have rather full information, recently increased by Mr. Wallace’s discovery of a Court of Requests suit in which they were concerned. Towards the end of February in that year Robert Shaw, Richard Jones, Gabriel Spencer, William Bird alias Borne, and Thomas Downton, who describe themselves in a suit of the following November as Pembroke’s servants, together with others their ‘accomplices and associates’, entered into an agreement with Francis Langley to play for twelve months ending on 20 February 1598 at the Swan. Each man gave a bond of £100, which was apparently to safeguard Langley against any failure by the company as a whole or of Robert Shaw or a sufficient substitute in particular to perform during this period, or against any performance elsewhere, otherwise than ‘in private places’, within five miles of London. Langley found £300 for apparel and, as he claimed, making ready of the play-house, and was to receive a moiety of the takings of the galleries and to be repaid for the apparel out of the other moiety. Of the men concerned, Jones and Downton had been Admiral’s men during 1594–7, and their transference coincides with a three weeks’ break in the performances of the Admiral’s at the Rose from 12 February onwards. Mr. Wallace (E. S. xliii. 357) says that Shaw, Spencer, and Bird were also of the Admiral’s, but of this there is no evidence. If Pembroke’s had any continued life during 1594–7, they may have shared it. But this seems improbable, and on the whole I am inclined to think that they came from the Chamberlain’s (q.v.). Plays were given at the Swan for some months, and Langley took £100 from the galleries, and £100 more for apparel. Then came an inhibition of plays near London on 28 July 1597, caused by the production of The Isle of Dogs, as a result of which one of the authors, Nashe, fled, and the other, Jonson, together with Shaw and Spencer, was committed to the Marshalsea. The definite evidence that Shaw and Spencer were Pembroke’s men at the Swan, now produced by Mr. Wallace, confirms my conjecture (M. L. R. iv. 411, 511) that The Isle of Dogs was an adventure of that house and not, as has sometimes been thought, of the Rose. Either in anticipation of a prolonged closing of the house or for some other reason, the company now desired to shake off their relations with Langley. Early in August Jones returned to Henslowe and made a new covenant with him. His example was followed by Shaw, Spencer, and Bird, and early in October by Downton. Their prescience was justified, for when in the course of October the chief offenders were released, and the inhibition, which was nominally terminable on 1 November, was in practice relaxed, it proved that, while Henslowe was able to get a new licence for the Rose, Langley could get none for the Swan. He urged them to try their fortunes without a licence, as others of their company were willing to do, but they not unnaturally refused, and Henslowe (i. 54) records, ‘The xj of October begane my lord Admerals and my lord of Penbrockes men to playe at my howsse 1597’. He describes the company under the double name again on 21 and 23 October and 5 November, but on 1 December and thereafter as the Lord Admiral’s (i. 68–70). A study of the Admiral’s repertory for 1597–8 suggests that some or all of the plays Black Joan, Hardicanute, Bourbon, Sturgflattery, Branholt, Friar Spendleton, Alice Pierce, and Dido and Aeneas may have been brought in by Pembroke’s men.

The five seceders had not heard the last of Langley. He sued them at common law on the bonds given not to play in a rival house. They successfully applied to have the case transferred to the Court of Requests, and in the course of the pleadings maintained, firstly, that they were prevented from playing at the Swan by the restraint and Langley’s failure to get a licence; secondly, that Langley had orally assented to their transfer to Henslowe; thirdly, that they could not appear at the Swan as a company, since Langley had ‘procured from them’ two (or, as they afterwards said, three) of their associates, to whom he had returned their obligations; and fourthly, that Langley had suffered no damage, since other men were occupying his house. They also complained that Langley had never handed over the apparel for which they had recouped him out of their gallery takings. The negotiations with Langley which they describe seem to have taken place during October. About the covenants entered into with Henslowe as far back as the beginning of August they said nothing, and whether either Langley or the court ever found out about these, and what the ultimate decision of the court on the main issue was, must remain uncertain. But certain loans entered in Henslowe’s diary suggest that in March 1598 Langley was in a position to arrest Bird, and that in September of the same year some kind of agreement was arrived at, under which Langley received £35, as well as £19 or more for a rich cloak (i. 63, 72, 73, 95, 96). It is possible that a ‘sewt agenste Thomas Poope’ of the Chamberlain’s, for which Henslowe (i. 72) made a personal advance of 10s. to William Bird on 30 August 1598, may also have been connected with the shiftings of companies in 1597.

The names of the two or three members of the company to whom Langley gave back their bonds are not stated in the pleadings. Perhaps one was Jonson, and the other two might conceivably have been Humphrey and Anthony Jeffes, since the name of ‘Humfrey’ stands with that of ‘Gabriel’ in stage-directions to 3 Henry VI, and Henslowe’s list of the reconstituted Admiral’s company as it stood in October 1597–January 1598 contains ‘the ij Geffes’, who are not traceable in the 1594–7 company and may well have come in with the five Pembroke’s men. Langley tells us that certain ‘fellows’ of his opponents had taken a more reasonable line than theirs and returned to the Swan. How long these men remained there we do not know, but probably they secured Pembroke’s patronage after the five had been definitely merged in the Admiral’s, for by the end of 1597 there was clearly a distinct Pembroke’s company again. Provincial records yield the name, not only at Bath in 1596–7 and at Bristol in September 1597, which may point to a tour of the undivided Swan company during the period of restraint, but also at Bath in 1598–9, at Bristol in July 1598, at Leicester between October and December, at Dover on 7 October, at Coventry on 12 December, and at Bewdley on 22 December. They were at Norwich in April 1599, at Coventry on 4 July, and at Bristol in July. They were at York on 21 January 1600, Bristol in April, Marlborough in May, and Leicester before Michaelmas. In October they were in relationship with Henslowe, who notes ‘my Lordes of Penbrockes men begane to playe at the Rosse’, and records performances of Like Unto Like and Roderick on 28 and 29 October respectively.[358] The former brought him 11s. 6d. and the latter 5s., and there apparently the experiment ended, and with it, so far as is known, the career of Pembroke’s men. It is just possible that they were merged in Worcester’s company, which arose shortly afterwards. Mr. Fleay expands this possibility into a definite theory that Kempe, Beeston, Duke, and Pallant left the Chamberlain’s men for Pembroke’s in 1599, and ultimately passed from these to Worcester’s. This is improbable as regards Kempe, and unproved as regards the rest.[359]