The succession of new plays was not quite so rapid during 1600–3 as in previous periods. I can only trace thirty-one in all, as against fifty-five in 1594–7 and sixty-two in 1599–1600. It may well have been the case that Alleyn, who had ‘created’ parts in the ’eighties and early ’nineties, had a tendency towards revivals. For 1600–1 the company bought only seven new books. These were:

None of these plays is extant, but the purchase of properties testifies to the performance of 2 Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green in April and The Six Yeomen of the West in July. Moreover, Day received a bonus of 10s. between 27 April and 2 May ‘after the playinge of’ the former piece. Only £1 was paid for 1 Fortune’s Tennis, but the existence of a ‘plot’ for 2 Fortune’s Tennis suggests that it must have been completed. Probably it was a short topical overture designed to celebrate the opening of the Fortune.[507] Unfinished plays were Robin Hood’s Pennyworths (Haughton)[508] and The Conquest of Spain by John of Gaunt (Hathway and Rankins). The revivals included Phaethon (January), The Blind Beggar of Alexandria (May), and The Jew of Malta (May). Dekker had £2 for ‘alterynge of’ Phaethon for the Court, and this was therefore the Admiral’s play of 6 January 1601. They also appeared on 28 December and 2 February. Dr. Faustus was entered on 7 January; the earliest print (1604) bears their name. The new books of 1601–2 were fourteen in number, as follows:[509]

At least ten of these appear to have been played: 2 Cardinal Wolsey (August), 3 Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green (September), Judas (January), The Conquest of the West Indies (January), Malcolm King of Scots (April), Love Parts Friendship (May), 1 Cardinal Wolsey (June), Jephthah (July), and at uncertain dates, Tobias and probably The Bristol Tragedy.[512] None is now extant. The unfinished plays were The Humorous Earl of Gloucester with his Conquest of Portugal (Wadeson), 2 Tom Dough[513] (Day and Haughton), The Orphan’s Tragedy (Chettle),[514] 2 The Six Clothiers (Hathway, Haughton, and Smith),[515] The Spanish Fig (Anon.),[516] Richard Crookback (Jonson),[517] A Danish Tragedy (Chettle),[518] and A Medicine for a Curst Wife (Dekker).[519] There was considerable activity of revival during the year. Six old plays belonging to the 1594–7 repertory, for some of which the company already held the properties,[520] were bought from Alleyn at £2 each, Mahomet in August, The Wise Man of West Chester in September, Vortigern in November, and The French Doctor, The Massacre at Paris, and Crack Me this Nut in January. The first and the last three of these certainly were played, and the revival of The Massacre at Paris appears to have caused annoyance to Henri IV.[521] In addition, properties were bought for one of the Hercules plays in December, Dekker got 10s. for a prologue and epilogue to Pontius Pilate[522] in January, and Jonson wrote additions to The Spanish Tragedy, possibly those now extant, in September, although it may be doubted whether the further additions contemplated in the following June were ever made. There is nothing to show what was selected, other than Nick’s tumbling, for the Admiral’s only Court play of 1601–2, which took place on 27 December.

The season of 1602–3 was, of course, shortened by the death of Elizabeth and the outbreak of plague. The new plays numbered nine. They were:

It must be added that in September properties were bought for a ‘new playe’ called The Earl of Hertford, which it seems impossible to identify with any of the pieces bought. This looks like one of the rare cases in which payment did not pass through Henslowe’s hands. This and Samson are the only new plays of the year, the actual performance of which can be verified; and none of these plays is extant.[524] I suspect, however, that Munday’s Set at Tennis is the 2 Fortune’s Tennis of which a ‘plot’ survives. The payment, of only £3, was ‘in full’, and it may, like 1 Fortune’s Tennis, have been a short piece of some exceptional character, motived by the name of the theatre in which it was presented. Unfinished plays at the end of the season were The Widow’s Charm (Munday or Wadeson),[525] William Cartwright (Haughton), Hoffman (Chettle),[526] 2 London Florentine (Chettle and Heywood), The Siege of Dunkirk and Alleyn the Pirate (Massey). The revival of old plays continued. Costumes for Vortigern, one of those bought from Alleyn in the previous year, were in preparation during September, and Alleyn’s stock yielded three more, Philip of Spain and Longshanks in August and Tamar Cham, probably the second part, as the extant ‘plot’ testifies, in October. The last two of these belonged to the Admiral’s repertory of 1594–7, but the origin of Philip of Spain is unknown. A book of The Four Sons of Aymon, for which £2 was paid to Robert Shaw, was probably also old, and was bought on condition that Shaw should repay the £2, unless the play was used by the Admiral’s or some other company with his consent by Christmas 1604. Bird and Rowley had £4 in September for additions to Dr. Faustus. Dekker completed some alterations of Tasso’s Melancholy, another 1594–7 play, in December, and in the same month Middleton wrote ‘for the corte’ a prologue and epilogue to Greene’s Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, which I should suppose to have been Henslowe’s property, as it was played by Strange’s men in 1592–3 and the Queen’s and Sussex’s in 1594. This probably served for the first of the three appearances made by the Admiral’s at Court, on 27 December. The other two were on 6 March and on a date unspecified. For one of these occasions Chettle was writing a prologue and epilogue at the end of December, but the play is not named.[527] One of the new plays, Merry as May Be, was intended for Court, when the first payment on account of it was made on 9 November.

On 12 March 1603 Henslowe practically closes the detailed record which he had kept continuously in his diary since October 1597 of his financial transactions, otherwise than by way of rent, with the Admiral’s men. A brief review of these is not without interest.[528] His advances from 21 October 1597 to 8 March 1598 amounted to £46 7s. 3d., and to this he took the signatures of the company, with the note, ‘Thes men dothe aknowlege this deat to be dewe by them by seatynge of ther handes to yette’. By 28 July a further amount of £120 15s. 4d. had been incurred, making a total of £166 17s. 7d. for 1597–8.[529] During the same period he entered weekly receipts from the company to a total of £125. These must have gone to an old debt, for he did not balance them with the payments for the year, but carried on the whole debit of £166 17s. 7d. to 1598–9. Apparently, however, he was not satisfied with the way in which expenditure was outstripping income, for he headed a new receipts account, ‘Here I begyne to receue the wholle gallereys frome this daye beinge the 29 of July 1598’, and the weekly entries become about double what they were during 1597–8. On the other hand, there is also a considerable increase in the rate of expenditure. It is an ingenious and, I think, sound conjecture of Dr. Greg’s, that throughout 1594–1603 Henslowe was taking half the gallery money for rent, and that, at different times, he also took either the other half, or another quarter only, to recoup himself for his advances.[530] The outgoings entered during 1598–9 reach £435 7s. 4d., but some items for March and April 1599 are probably missing, owing to a mutilation of the manuscript.[531] The receipts for the same period were £358 3s. On 13 October 1599, about a fortnight after the beginning of the 1599–1600 season, a balance was struck. Henslowe credited the company with the £358 received from the gallery money, and debited them with £632 advanced by him. This includes £166 17s. 7d. for 1597–8, £435 7s. 4d. for 1598–9, and £29 15s. 1d., which may reasonably be taken as the sum of the missing entries for March and April 1599. The balance of £274 remained as a debt from the company. They did not, however, set their hands to a reckoning until the end of the next year, on 10 July 1600. During 1599–1600 a fresh account had been running, on which Henslowe’s receipts were £202 10s. and his payments £222 5s. 6d. At the reckoning the company’s indebtedness is calculated at £300, and is admitted by the formula, ‘which some of three hundred powndes we whose names are here vnder written doe acknowledge our dewe debt & doe promyse payment’. To this their signatures are appended. There is, however, an unexplained discrepancy of £6 4s. 6d., as the old debt of £274 and the 1599–1600 debit balance of £19 15s. 6d. only make up £293 15s. 6d.

From 1600 onwards there are no records of receipts. A continuous account of payments is kept up to 7 February 1602. The total amounts to £304 10s. 4d., but Henslowe sums it in error as £308 6s. 4d., and notes, ‘Frome ther handes to this place is 308ll-06s-04d dewe vnto me & with the three hundred of owld is £608-06-04d’. He then adds the £50 paid to Jones and Shaw on retirement, ‘which is not in this recknynge’. Above this summary comes a list of names, said by Dr. Greg to be in Shaw’s hand, of those sharers who were continuing in the company, headed by the figures ‘211. 9. 0.’ I think the interpretation is that £386 17s. 4d. of the £608 6s. 4d. was paid out of gallery money or other sources, leaving £211 9s., together with the £50 for Jones and Shaw, chargeable on the company. This is borne out by the remnant of the accounts, which is headed, ‘Begininge with a new recknyng with my lord of Notingames men the 23 daye of Febreary 1601 as foloweth’. The expenditure on this new reckoning up to 12 March 1603 was, as calculated by Henslowe, £188 11s. 6d., and he adds to this total a sum of £211 9s. ‘vpon band’, being evidently the residue of the debt as it stood at the close of the old reckoning, and makes a total of £400 0s. 6d. This, with the £50 for Jones and Shaw, was no doubt what the company owed when the detailed account in the diary closed. There was, however, an unstated amount of gallery receipts during 1602–3 to set against it; and in fact a retrospect of the whole series of figures shows that there would have been a pretty fair equivalence of gallery money and advances throughout, but for the exceptionally heavy expenditure of 1598–9, £465 2s. 5d. in all, which left the company saddled with an obligation which they never quite overtook. This expenditure was more than half the total expenditure of £854 5s. 6d. for the triennium 1597–1600, and nearly as much as the whole expenditure of £493 1s. 10d. for the triennium 1600–3, during which it may be suspected that the business capacities of Alleyn brought about considerable economies.