There is evidence of the actual performance of Mother Redcap, Phaethon (January), 1 and 2 Robin Hood (March), 1 Earl Godwin (April), King Arthur (May), 2 Earl Godwin (June), 1 Black Bateman (June). Properties were bought for The Madman’s Morris in July, and the next season probably opened with it. To the new plays must be added Friar Spendleton, produced as ‘ne’ on 31 October, and Dido and Aeneas. A loan of 30s. on 8 January ‘when they fyrst played Dido at nyght’ suggests a supper, not a night performance. Either play may have been purchased at the end of 1596–7, or may have come from Pembroke’s stock. The same applies to Branholt and Alice Pierce, which were probably new when properties were purchased for them in November and December. The company also bought on 12 December two jigs from two young men, for which they paid 6s. 8d. Hardly any of the 1597–8 new plays are extant. The two parts of Robin Hood are The Downfall of Robert Earl of Huntingdon, and The Death of Robert Earl of Huntingdon, printed without Munday’s name as Admiral’s plays in 1601. Haughton’s A Woman will have her Will was entered on the Stationers’ Register on 3 August 1601, and printed with the alternative title of Englishmen for my Money in 1616. Phaethon probably underlies Dekker and Ford’s The Sun’s Darling, and it is a plausible conjecture of Mr. Fleay’s that Love Prevented may be 1 The Two Angry Women of Abingdon, printed as an Admiral’s play in 1599, and not to be traced elsewhere in the diary. The payments for four plays during the year, besides the puzzling A Woman will have her Will, were incomplete. I take it that the £2 paid to Chettle, Dekker, Drayton, and Wilson for Pierce of Exton was transferred to the account for 2 Earl Godwin, which otherwise lacks just that amount of the full £6; that Chettle failed to deliver A Woman’s Tragedy; that Chapman’s Isle of a Woman was held over until 1598–9; and that a projected tragedy of Ben Jonson’s was similarly held over, and then indefinitely postponed owing to the tragedy in real life of Spencer’s death. There are two entries with regard to this. On 3 December 1597, Henslowe lent Jonson 20s. ‘vpon a boocke which he showed the plotte vnto the company which he promysed to deliver vnto the company at Cryssmas next’. On 23 October 1598, a month after the duel, not Jonson, but Chapman, received £3 ‘one his playe boocke & ij ectes of a tragedie of Bengemenes plotte’. I think that Chapman’s own play was The Four Kings and that he finished it in 1599; but I see no sign that he ever did anything with ‘Bengemenes plotte’.

Of older plays the Admiral’s revived at the beginning of the year Chapman’s success of the previous spring, The Comedy of Humours; also the perennial Dr. Faustus, and two pieces which, as they formed no part of the 1594–7 repertory, may have been brought in by Pembroke’s men, Hardicanute and Bourbon. They bought for £8 from Martin Slater 1 and 2 Hercules, Phocas, Pythagoras, and Alexander and Lodowick, all of which had been produced between May 1595 and January 1597, and had evidently been retained by Slater when he left the company. These books presumably do not include that which became the subject of the lawsuit between Slater and the Admiral’s men, and as they had afterwards to buy back some of their old books in a precisely similar way from Alleyn, it is probable that a retiring member of the company had a right to claim a partition of the repertory. They also bought The Cobler of Queenhithe,[446] and from Robert Lee, formerly of the Admiral’s men and afterwards of Queen Anne’s, The Miller. But of these seven purchased plays, the only one that they can be proved to have revived is one of the Hercules plays, for which they bought properties in July. The book-inventory shows that they had plays called Black Joan and Sturgflattery,[447] also possibly from Pembroke’s stock; and the property-inventories that they had properties and clothes, if not in all cases books,[448] for The Battle of Alcazar[449] and for a number of pieces staged during 1594–7, including Mahomet,[450] Tamburlaine,[451] The Jew of Malta,[452] 1 Fortunatus,[453] The Siege of London,[454] Belin Dun,[455] Tasso’s Melancholy,[456] 1 Caesar and Pompey,[457] The Wise Man of West Chester,[458] The Set at Maw,[459] Olympo,[460] Henry V,[461] Longshanks,[462] Troy,[463] Vortigern,[464] Guido,[465] Uther Pendragon.[466] To these must be added Pontius Pilate,[467] revived in 1601 and perhaps from the Pembroke’s stock, and others now unidentifiable.[468] As the company revived The Blind Beggar of Alexandria in 1601 they probably had this also.[469]

The new plays purchased in 1598–9 were twenty-one in number:

The property and licence entries only make it possible to trace the actual performance during the year of Pierce of Winchester (October), 1 and 2 Civil Wars of France (October and November), The Fount of New Fashions (November), 2 Angry Women of Abingdon (February), 2 Conquest of Brute (March), The Four Kings (March), The Spencers (April), and Agamemnon (June). Probably, in view of the extant fragment of a ‘plot’ Troilus and Cressida should be added. The production of Troy’s Revenge was deferred until the following October. No one of this year’s new plays is extant, unless, as is possible, All Fools but the Fool was an early form of Chapman’s All Fools.[478] Earnests were paid in the course of 1598–9 for Catiline’s Conspiracy (Chettle), Tis no Deceit to Deceive the Deceiver (Chettle), William Longsword[479] (Drayton), Two Merry Women of Abingdon (Porter), and an unnamed pastoral tragedy by Chapman, but there is no reason to suppose that any one of these was ever finished. On 9 August 1598 Munday had 10s. in earnest of an unnamed comedy ‘for the corte’ and Drayton gave his word for the book to be done in a fortnight, but the project must have been dropped, as the entry was cancelled. Of old plays the company revived in August Vayvode, in November The Massacre at Paris, in which Bird played the Guise,[480] in December 1 The Conquest of Brute, bought from John Day, and in March Alexander and Lodowick, bought from Martin Slater in the preceding year. As to Vayvode, the entries are rather puzzling. In August Chettle received £1 ‘for his playe of Vayvode’, and the purchase of properties show that the production took place. But in the following January there was a payment of £2 to Alleyn ‘for the playe of Vayvod for the company’. Possibly Alleyn had some rights in the manuscript, which were at first overlooked. On 25 November Chettle had 10s. ‘for mendinge of Roben Hood for the corte’. Either 1 or 2 Robin Hood was therefore probably the play given on 6 January 1599. At the beginning of the year the company bought Mulmutius Dunwallow from William Rankins and another old play called Tristram of Lyons, but it must be uncertain whether they played them. A reference in Guilpin’s Skialetheia suggests that The Spanish Tragedy may have been on the boards of the Rose not long before September 1598.[481]

The new plays completed during 1599–1600, twenty in all, were:

It is possible to verify the actual performance of Page of Plymouth (September), 1 Sir John Oldcastle (November),[486] Fortunatus (December), The Gentle Craft (January), Thomas Merry (January), Patient Grissell (January), 2 Sir John Oldcastle (March), The Seven Wise Masters (March), Ferrex and Porrex (May), Damon and Pythias (May), Strange News out of Poland (May), Cupid and Psyche (June). Sir John Oldcastle must of course be regarded as a counterblast to the Henry IV plays of the Chamberlain’s men, in which the character of Falstaff originally bore the name of the Lollard hero. One infers that it had a considerable success, for the company gave 10s. for ‘Mr. Mundaye and the reste of the poets at the playnge of Sr John Oldcastell the ferste tyme’, and Henslowe notes in the margin that this was ‘as a gefte’. It is with some hesitation that I have included Fortunatus in the list of new plays, because it is impossible to suppose that it was not based upon the earlier Fortunatus, already an old play in 1596, of the properties of which the Admiral’s men certainly retained possession. But Dekker was paid on the scale of a new play, for he got a full £6 in the course of November for the book, together with an additional £1 ‘for the altrenge of the boocke’ and £2 a fortnight later ‘for the eande of Fortewnatus for the corte’. I take it that this was the Court play of 27 December. That of 1 January was another of Dekker’s, The Gentle Craft, also called The Shoemaker’s Holiday, which was published in the year ‘1600’ as played before the Queen ‘on New Year’s Day at night last’ by the Admiral’s men. Fortunatus, 1 Sir John Oldcastle,[486] Patient Grissell, and 1 Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green have also been preserved, while the publication, also in the course of the twelve months ending on 24 March 1601, of Look About You as an Admiral’s play must surely render plausible the hypothesis, rejected by Dr. Greg, of its identity with Bear a Brain. It would seem that Thomas Merry furnishes one of the two parallel plots of Robert Yarington’s Two Lamentable Tragedies, and a notice by Simon Forman suggests that Cox of Collumpton was ultimately finished.[487] An outline of the opening scenes of 2 Henry Richmond is among the Dulwich papers.[488] Publication was a form of popularity which the actors were apt to resent. The Admiral’s men spent £2 on 18 March 1600 ‘to geue vnto the printer to staye the printing of Patient Gresell’. This did not prevent the play being entered on the Stationers’ Register on 28 March, but does perhaps explain why the earliest known edition is dated 1603. The unfinished plays of 1599–1600 were The Poor Man’s Paradise (Haughton), The Orphans’ Tragedy (Chettle),[489] an unnamed Italian tragedy by Day, The Arcadian Virgin (Chettle and Haughton), Owen Tudor (Drayton, Hathway, Munday, and Wilson), Truth’s Supplication to Candlelight (Dekker),[490] The Spanish Moor’s Tragedy (Day, Dekker, and Haughton),[491] The English Fugitives (Haughton), The Devil and his Dame (Haughton),[492] The Wooing of Death (Chettle), Judas (Haughton),[493] 2 Fair Constance of Rome (Hathway), and an unnamed play by Chettle and Day.[494] Except in so far as Fortunatus was an old play, I find no trace of a revival during 1599–1600, but it may be assumed that some of the productions of the last two years still held the boards.

The year 1600 was another turning-point in the history of the company. Probably at some date between 14 August, when the first entry in a fresh account was made, and 28 October, when Pembroke’s men were in occupation of the Rose, they crossed the river, and took up their quarters at Alleyn’s recently built Fortune, on the north-west boundary of the City. A more important event still was the return of Alleyn himself to the stage, from which he had been absent for three years. It is suggested in the Privy Council letter of 8 April 1600 to the Middlesex justices in favour of the Fortune project, that this step was determined by the personal wish of the Queen to see the great actor at Court with his fellows again.[495] It is not quite clear on what terms he rejoined the company. There was a ‘composicion’ or agreement, in connexion with which a payment of £4 was made to him on 11 November. The next entry, which is undated, runs, ‘Pd vnto my sonne Alleyn for the firste weckes playe the xj parte of xvijll ixs which came to therti & ij shellinges’. There are no further entries of the same kind until the date of a reckoning in February 1602, when Henslowe paid Alleyn 27s. 6d. ‘dew to my sone out of the gallery money’. Probably this was a share of some small residue, the origin of which cannot now be traced. The earlier payment suggests that Alleyn received one full share of the actors’ takings, for, if I am right in supposing that the brothers Jeffes only held half a share each, there would have been just ten sharers besides himself. Or possibly his share may have been limited to the actors’ moiety of the gallery takings, and the outgoings may all have been charged to the receipts from the yard. Certainly Alleyn does not seem to have had any responsibility for these outgoings. His name is never put with those of other sharers to Henslowe’s periodical reckonings, and if his play-books were used, they were bought from him. On the other hand, he sometimes, although not so often as some of his fellows, ‘appointed’ payments, and he received the Court money for the company, alike in 1601, 1602, and 1603. That his share did not pass through Henslowe’s hands after the date of the first instalment is perhaps explained by the assumption that, as the owner and joint occupier with Henslowe of the Fortune, the appointment of a ‘gatherer’ for the gallery money may naturally have fallen to him.

Some such change in the financial arrangements may also account for the fact that, while Henslowe’s record of advances continues on the same lines as that for 1597–1600, the notes of weekly repayments are now discontinued. As a result it is no longer possible to determine with any exactness the length of the theatrical seasons, since, naturally enough, the outgoings did not altogether stop while the house was closed. Their course, however, suggests intervals in February and March 1601, February to April 1602, August 1602 and January and February 1603. It is possible, although not very likely, that there was no cessation of playing during the summer of 1601. I find no evidence of further provincial travels before the end of the reign. These were, I think, years of prosperity. The players still required small personal advances from time to time, and Thomas Towne was reduced to pawning a pair of stockings on 13 March 1602.[496] But it is noticeable that about the previous June Henslowe opened an account under the heading, ‘Begininge to receue of thes meane ther privet deates which they owe vnto me’, and was able to enter in it a series of repayments by Jones, Downton, Bird, and Shaw.[497] Bird, however, still owed £10 10s. on 12 March 1602, and Henslowe noted, ‘He is cleere of all debtes & demaundes except theis debtes and such stocke & covenentes as I maie clayme & challendge of him by reason of his coniunction with the companie’.[498] Whether the playwrights reaped any benefit may be doubted. The tendency to a rise of prices which showed itself in 1599 was hardly maintained. Some of them were still impecunious enough. The company had, on more than one occasion to redeem a play which the unfortunate Chettle had pawned with one Bromfield, a mercer; and in March 1602 he seems to have followed Porter’s example and put his hand, for a consideration of £3, to an instrument binding him to write for them alone.[499] There were some legal troubles in the course of 1601. A sum of £21 10s. had to be paid on a bond to a Mr. Treheren during March, and in August there were fees to a jury and a clerk of assizes. The company had also to find 10s. in May ‘to geatte the boye into the ospetalle which was hurt at the Fortewne’.[500] Information as to the composition of the company at some time between Alleyn’s return and February 1602 is given by the ‘plot’ of The Battle of Alcazar, although, as this is mutilated, it must not be treated as negative evidence, and in particular the names of W. Borne and John Singer are missing.[501] All the other sharers, however, are found in it—‘Mr. Ed. Allen, Mr. Doughton, Mr. Juby, Mr. Shaa, Mr. Jones, Mr. Towne, Antony Jeffes, H. Jeffes, Mr. Charles [Massey], and Mr. Sam [Rowley]’. There are also Mr. Rich. Allen and Mr. Hunt, who were not sharers, but whose long service had apparently earned them the dignity of the ‘Mr.’, W. Kendall, Jeames, who was possibly Henslowe’s apprentice James Bristow and possibly Jones’s boy of the same name, and Dob, who was probably the Dobe of the 1598 inventory. The remaining names, all of which are new, are those of W. Cartwright, who, however, had witnessed a loan for Henslowe as far back as 21 April 1598,[502] Dick Jubie, Ro. Tailor, George Somerset, Tho. Drum, [Thomas] Parsons, Harry, and the ‘boys’ of Mr. Allen and Mr. Towne. The only important woman’s part, that of Callipolis, is assigned by the ‘plot’ to Pisano, which does not look like an actor’s name and may be a mistake. The services of Bristow were evidently leased out by Henslowe to the company or some one of its members, at a rate of 3s. a week. Antony Jeffes paid two weeks’ arrears ‘for my boyes Jeames wages’ in August 1600, and Henslowe charged the company £6 10s. on the same account in the following February.[503] Another boy attached to the company about the same time must have been ‘Nick’, for whom hose ‘to tumbell in be fore the quen’ were bought on 25 December 1601. Hugh Davis, for the mending of whose tawny coat ‘which was eatten with the rattes’ 6s. 7d. was paid in November 1601, was perhaps a hired man. A list of the responsible members of the company is attached by Henslowe to a reckoning cast between 7 and 23 February 1602. They were then ‘John Singer, Thomas Downton, William Byrd, Edward Juby, Thomas Towne, Humphrey Jeffs, Anthony Jeffs, Samuel Rowley, and Charles Massy’.[504] A note is added that £50 had been advanced ‘to geve vnto Mr. Jonnes & Mr. Shaw at ther goinge a waye’. This departure must have been quite recent. Shaw had been agent for the company on the previous 21 January, and the list of continuing members is in fact in his handwriting. The last instalment of Jones’s private debt had been paid off on 1 November. His three years’ agreement with Henslowe had expired at Michaelmas 1600. Richard Alleyn must have died in September 1602, for on the 19th of that month his widow borrowed £5 10s. to take her mantle and sheet and face-cloth out of pawn.[505] Neither Shaw nor Jones nor Richard Alleyn is in the plot of 1 Tamar Cham, which may reasonably be assigned to a date in the vicinity of the purchase of the book from Alleyn on 2 October 1602. This is of interest, partly because it is complete, and partly because there was a procession in the play, and the number of supernumeraries required must have tried the resources of the establishment to their utmost. All the principal members of the company appeared—‘Mr. Allen, Mr. Denygten, Mr. Boorne, Mr. Towne, Mr. Singer, Mr. Jubie, H. Jeffs, A. Jeffs, Mr. Charles [Massey], and Mr. Sam [Rowley]’; and in addition Dick Jubie, W. Cart[wright], George [Somerset], Tho. Parsons, and Jeames [Bristow], who were in The Battle of Alcazar, and W. Parr, Tho. Marbeck, Jack Grigorie, Gedion, Gibbs, Tho. Rowley, Rester, ‘old Browne’, Ned Browne, ‘the red fast fellow’ and several boys, described, perhaps in some cases twice over, as Jack Jones, ‘little Will’, ‘little Will Barne’, who do not seem to be identical, ‘Gils his boy’, ‘Mr. Denyghtens little boy’, perhaps the same already recorded in 1600, and ‘the other little boy’. ‘Old Browne’ can hardly be Robert Browne, who seems to have been in Germany; but Ned Browne may be the Edward Browne who, like Robert, was a member of Worcester’s company in 1583. Little is added by the only other extant ‘plot’, the fragmentary one of 2 Fortune’s Tennis. This is difficult to date, but it must be later than Dekker’s 1 Fortune’s Tennis of September 1600, and may not improbably be Munday’s Set at Tennis of December 1602. The few names which it contains—Mr. Singer, Sam, Charles, Geo[rge Somerset], R. Tailor, W. Cartwright, Pavy—suggest proximity to The Battle of Alcazar and 1 Tamar Cham. The only fresh one is that of Pavy, who may or may not be connected with the Salathiel Pavy of Ben Jonson’s epitaph. Both 1 Tamar Cham and 2 Fortune’s Tennis must be earlier than January 1603, a month which saw the retirement of the old Queen’s man, John Singer. So at least may be inferred from the fact that he makes no further appearance in the diary after 13 January, when he received £5 ‘for his play called Syngers Vallentarey’. I take ‘vallentarey’ to mean ‘valediction’. His name is absent from the next list of the company, which belongs to 1604. He probably left to become an ordinary Groom of the Chamber in the royal household, a post which he is found occupying at the time of Elizabeth’s funeral.[506]