The Elizabethan Stage, Vol. 2

by E. K. Chambers

xix. THE LORD ADMIRAL’S (LORD HOWARD’S, EARL OF NOTTINGHAM’S), PRINCE HENRY’S, AND ELECTOR PALATINE’S MEN

Charles Howard, s. of William, 1st Baron Howard of Effingham, g.s. of Thomas, 2nd Duke of Norfolk; nat. 1536; m. (1) Catherine Carey, d. of Henry Lord Hunsdon, Lady of the Privy Chamber, (2) Margaret Stuart, d. of James Earl of Murray, c. 1604; succ. as 2nd Baron, 29 Jan. 1573; Deputy Lord Chamberlain, 1574–5; Vice-Admiral, Feb. 1582; Lord Chamberlain, c. Dec. 1583; Lord High Admiral, 8 July 1585–1619; Earl of Nottingham, 22 Oct. 1596; Lord Steward, 1597; ob. 14 Dec. 1624.

Henry Frederick, s. of James VI of Scotland and I of England; nat. 19 Feb. 1594; cr. Duke of Rothesay, 30 Aug. 1594; succ. as Duke of Cornwall, 24 Mar. 1603; cr. Earl of Chester and Prince of Wales, 4 June 1610; ob. 6 Nov. 1612.

Frederick, s. of Frederick IV, Count Palatine of the Rhine; nat. 19 Aug. 1596; succ. as Frederick V, 1610; m. Princess Elizabeth of England, 14 Feb. 1613; elected King of Bohemia, 1619; ob. 1632.

[Bibliographical Note.—The material preserved amongst the papers of Philip Henslowe and Edward Alleyn at Dulwich has been fully collected and studied by W. W. Greg in Henslowe’s Diary (1904–8) and Henslowe Papers (1907), which replace the earlier publications of Malone, Collier, and others from the same source. I have added a little from Professor Wallace’s researches and elsewhere, and have attempted to give my own reading of the evidence, which differs in a few minor points from Dr. Greg’s.]

It was perhaps his employment as deputy to the Earl of Sussex in the office of Lord Chamberlain which led Lord Howard to encourage players. A company, under the name of Lord Howard’s men, appeared at Court for the first time at the Christmas of 1576–7. On 27 December they played Tooley, and on 17 February The Solitary Knight.[360] They came again for the last time in the following winter, and performed on 5 January 1578. They were also at Kirtling on 3 December 1577, Saffron Walden in 1577–8, Ipswich on 24 October 1577, in 1578–9, and perhaps on 8 October 1581, Bristol, where they gave The Queen of Ethiopia, between 31 August and 6 September 1578, Nottingham on 19 December 1578, and Bath and Coventry in 1578–9.

Howard again had players at Court, after he became Admiral in 1585. The first record of them is at Dover in June 1585. Later in the year they were playing in conjunction with the Lord Chamberlain’s (Lord Hunsdon’s). ‘The Lorde Chamberlens and the Lord Admirall’s players’ were rewarded at Leicester in October-December 1585, and ‘the servants of the lo: admirall and the lo: Chamberlaine’ for a play at Court on 6 January 1586.[361] During the same Christmas, however, the Admiral’s played alone on 27 December 1585, and as Hunsdon’s survived in the provinces, the two organizations may have been amalgamated for one performance only. The Admiral’s were at Coventry, Faversham, Ipswich, and Leicester in 1585–6. They were reported to Walsingham amongst other London companies on 25 January 1587 (App. D, No. lxxviii), although they did not appear at Court during this winter. In 1586–7 they were at Cambridge, Coventry, Bath, York, Norwich, Ipswich, Exeter, Southampton, and Leicester. By November they were back in London, and on the 16th an accident at their theatre is thus related by Philip Gawdy to his father:[362]

‘Yow shall vnderstande of some accydentall newes heare in this towne thoughe my self no wyttnesse thereof, yet I may be bold to veryfye it for an assured troth. My L. Admyrall his men and players having a devyse in ther playe to tye one of their fellowes to a poste and so to shoote him to deathe, having borrowed their callyvers one of the players handes swerved his peece being charged with bullett missed the fellowe he aymed at and killed a chyld, and a woman great with chyld forthwith, and hurt an other man in the head very soore. How they will answere it I do not study vnlesse their profession were better, but in chrystyanity I am very sorry for the chaunce but God his iudgementes ar not to be searched nor enquired of at mannes handes. And yet I fynde by this an old proverbe veryfyed ther never comes more hurte than commes of fooling.’

Possibly the company went into retirement as a result of this disaster; at any rate nothing more is heard of them until the Christmas of 1588–9. They then came to Court, and were rewarded for two interludes and ‘for showinge other feates of activitye and tumblinge’ on 29 December 1588 and 11 February 1589.[363] On 6 November 1589 they were playing in the City, and were suppressed by the Lord Mayor, because Tilney, the Master of the Revels, misliked their plays. Probably they had been concerning themselves with the Marprelate controversy. Strange’s men, who were evidently performing as a separate company, shared their fate. It may have been this misadventure which led the Admiral’s to seek house-room with James Burbadge at the Theatre (q.v.), where some evidence by John Alleyn, who, with James Tunstall, was of their number, locates them in November 1590 and May 1591. A relic of this period may be presumed to exist in the ‘plot’ of Dead Man’s Fortune, preserved with other plots belonging to the company at Dulwich, in which Burbadge, doubtless Richard Burbadge, then still a boy, appeared. Certainly there is nothing to connect Burbadge with the company at any other date. Other actors in the piece were one Darlowe, ‘b[oy?] Samme’, and Robert Lee, later of Anne’s men. The Admiral’s again showed ‘feats of activitie’ at Court on 28 December 1589, and a play on 3 March 1590. In 1589–90 they were at Coventry, Ipswich, Maidstone, Marlborough, Winchester, and Gloucester, and in 1590–1 at Winchester and Gloucester. Marlowe’s Tamburlaine was published in 1590 as ‘shewed upon stages in the City of London’ by the Admiral’s men. The Court records for the following winter present what looks at first sight like a curious discrepancy. The accounts of the Treasurer of the Chamber include payments for plays and activities on 27 December 1590 and 16 February 1591 to Lord Strange’s men. The corresponding warrants, however, were made out, according to the Privy Council Register, for the Admiral’s. Probably there is no error here, and the entries are evidence of an amalgamation between the two companies, which possibly dated from as far back as the winter of 1589, and which seems to have endured until the summer of 1594. Technically, it would seem that it was the Admiral’s who were merged in Strange’s men. It is the latter and not the former who generally appear in official documents during this period. I have therefore dealt with its details for both companies, with the question of the precise date of the amalgamation, and with the possibility that the plot of The Seven Deadly Sins and its list of actors also belong to a Theatre performance of about 1590, in my account of Strange’s men, and need only remark here that the name of the Admiral’s does not altogether fall into disuse, especially in provincial records, and that the leading actor, Edward Alleyn, in particular, is shown by an official document to have retained his personal status as an Admiral’s servant.

It is a question of some interest how early Alleyn’s connexion with the Admiral’s may be supposed to have begun. Was he, for example, the original Tamburlaine of 1587, and was it as an Admiral’s man that Nashe referred to him, if it was he to whom Nashe referred, as the Roscius of the contemporary players in his Menaphon epistle of 1589? He is known to have been a member of Worcester’s company in 1583. Dr. Greg is disposed to think that he remained with them until the death of the third Earl of Worcester on 22 February 1589, and then joined the Admiral’s.[364] It is, however, to be observed that there is no trace of Worcester’s men between 1584 and 1590, and that it is in 1585 that the Admiral’s men begin to appear at Court. On the whole, it commends itself to me as the more probable conjecture that the first Earl of Worcester’s company passed into Howard’s service, when he became Admiral in 1585, and that the players of the fourth Earl of Worcester between 1590 and 1596 were distinct from those of his father. The issue concerns others besides Edward Alleyn himself. Amongst the members of Worcester’s company in 1583 were Robert Browne, James Tunstall, and Richard Jones; and all three of these are found concerned with Alleyn in matters of theatrical business during 1589–91. The most important document is a deed of sale by ‘Richarde Jones of London yoman’ to ‘Edwarde Allen of London gent’ for £37 10s. of ‘all and singuler suche share parte and porcion of playinge apparrelles, playe bookes, instrumentes, and other comodities whatsoeuer belonginge to the same, as I the said Richarde Jones nowe haue or of right ought to haue joyntlye with the same Edwarde Allen, John Allen citizen and inholder of London and Roberte Browne yoman’.[365] This is dated 3 January 1589. There are also three deeds of sale to Edward and John Alleyn of theatrical apparel between 1589 and 1591, and to two of these James Tunstall was a witness.[366] On Dr. Greg’s theory as to the date at which Alleyn took service with the Lord Admiral, the organization in whose properties Richard Jones had an interest would naturally be Worcester’s men; on mine it would be the Admiral’s, and it would follow that Jones and Browne, as well as Alleyn, had joined that company. We have seen that James Tunstall had done so by 1590–1. John Alleyn was an elder brother of Edward. There is nothing to connect him with Worcester’s men. He was a servant of Lord Sheffield in November 1580 and of the Lord Admiral in 1589.[367] A letter of one Elizabeth Socklen to Edward Alleyn refers to a time ‘when your brother, my lovinge cozen John Allen, dwelt with my very good lord, Charles Heawarde’, and this rather suggests that his service was in some household capacity, and not merely as player.[368] If so, it may have been through him that Edward Alleyn and his fellows became Admiral’s men. The first period of their activity seems to have lasted from 1585 to 1589, and it was no doubt Edward Alleyn’s genius, and perhaps also his business capacity, which enabled them to offer a serious rivalry to the Queen’s company. I suspect that in 1589 or 1590 they were practically dissolved, and this view is confirmed by the fact that their most important play was allowed to get to the hands of the printers. Alleyn, with the help of his brother, bought up the properties, and allied himself with Lord Strange’s men, and so far as the Admiral’s continued to exist at all for the next few years, it was almost entirely in and through him that it did so. After a financial quarrel with James Burbadge in May 1591, the combined companies moved to the Rose. There is nothing to show whether the Alleyns bought up Robert Browne’s interest as well as that of Richard Jones. At any rate Browne began in 1590 that series of continental tours which occupied most of the rest of his career (cf. ch. xiv). Jones joined him in one of these adventures in 1592, and it is possible that John Bradstreet and Thomas Sackville, who went with them, were also old Admiral’s men. But I do not think that it is accurate to regard this company, as Dr. Greg seems to be inclined to do, as being itself under the Admiral’s patronage. It is true that they obtained a passport from him, but this was probably given rather in his capacity as warden of the seas than in that of their lord. His name is not mentioned in any of the foreign records of their peregrinations. It is not possible to say which, other than Alleyn, of the members of the 1592–3 Strange’s and Admiral’s company, whose names have been preserved, came from each of the two contributing sources. They do not include either John Alleyn or James Tunstall, or Edward Browne, a Worcester’s man of 1583, who reappears with Tunstall among the Admiral’s after 1594. Nor is it possible to say how far the repertory of Strange’s men, as disclosed by the 1592–3 entries in Henslowe’s diary, included plays drawn from the Admiral’s stock. This may have been the case with The Battle of Alcazar, which was printed as an Admiral’s play in 1594, and with Orlando Furioso, which contemporary gossip represents Greene as selling first to the Queen’s and then to the Admiral’s. And it may have been the case with 1 Tamar Cham, which passed to the later Admiral’s. Neither Tamburlaine nor The Wounds of Civil War, printed like The Battle of Alcazar as an Admiral’s play in 1594, is recorded to have been played by Strange’s.