The company were at Oxford between 7 May and 16 June 1604. About 18 December they had got into trouble through the production of a tragedy on Gowry, always a delicate subject with James.[610] But this did not interfere with a long series of no less than eleven performances which they gave at Court between 1 November 1604 and 12 February 1605, and of which the Revels Accounts fortunately preserve the names.[611] The series included one play, The Spanish Maze, of which nothing is known; two by Ben Jonson, Every Man In his Humour and Every Man Out of his Humour; and seven by Shakespeare, Othello, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Measure for Measure, The Comedy of Errors, Henry V, Love’s Labour’s Lost, and The Merchant of Venice, which was given twice. Othello and Measure for Measure had probably been produced for the first time during 1604, but the rest of the list suggests that opportunity was being taken to revive a number of Elizabethan plays unknown to the new sovereigns. This is borne out by the terms of a letter from Sir Walter Cope to Lord Southampton with regard to the performance of Love’s Labour ’s Lost.[612]
Between 4 May 1605, when he made his will, and 13 May, when it was proved, died Augustine Phillips. Unlike Pope, he was full of kindly remembrances towards the King’s men. He appointed Heminges, Burbadge, and Sly overseers of the will. He left legacies to his ‘fellows’ Shakespeare, Condell, Fletcher, Armin, Cowley, Cooke, and Nicholas Tooley; to the hired men of the company; to his ‘servant’ Christopher Beeston; to his apprentice James Sands, and to his late apprentice Samuel Gilburne. We have here practically a full list of the company. The name of Nicholas Tooley is new, unless indeed he was the ‘Nick’ of Strange’s men in 1592. He speaks of Richard Burbadge in his will as his ‘master’ and may have been his apprentice. The use of the term ‘fellow’ suggests that Tooley and Cooke were now sharers in the company. On the other hand Lowin, who is not named among the ‘fellows’, may still have been only a hired man. Beeston’s legacy is doubtless in memory of former service as hired man or apprentice; he was in 1605 and for long after with the Queen’s men. Samuel Gilburne is recorded as a Shakespearian actor in the 1623 Folio, but practically nothing is known of him or of James Sands. The exact legal disposal of the interest held by Phillips in the Globe subsequently became matter of controversy, but in effect it remained from 1605 to 1613 with his widow and her second husband, and was thus alienated from the company.
On some date before Michaelmas in 1605 the King’s men visited Barnstaple, and on 9 October they were at Oxford. This year saw the publication of The Fair Maid of Bristow and of The London Prodigal, which was assigned on its title-page to Shakespeare. To it I also assign Shakespeare’s Macbeth and King Lear.
Ten Court plays were given in the winter of 1605–6, but the dates are not recorded. Three more were given in the summer of 1606 during the visit of the King of Denmark to James, which lasted from 7 July to 11 August, and then the company seem to have gone on tour. They were at Oxford between 28 and 31 July, at Leicester in August, at Dover between 6 and 24 September, at Saffron Walden and Maidstone during 1605–6, and at Marlborough in 1606. To this year I assign Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra and Coriolanus, and to the earlier part of it Ben Jonson’s Volpone, in which the principal actors were Burbadge, Condell, Sly, Heminges, Lowin, and Cooke.
Nine Court plays were given during the winter of 1606–7, on 26 and 29 December 1606, and on 4, 6, and 8 January and 2, 5, 15, and 27 February 1607. The entry in the Stationers’ Register for King Lear and the title-page of Barnes’ The Devil’s Charter, both dated in 1607, show these to have been the plays selected for 26 December and 2 February respectively. In the same year were also published Tourneur’s The Revenger’s Tragedy and Wilkins’ The Miseries of Enforced Marriage, and to it I assign the production of Timon of Athens. On 16 July 1607 Heminges lent his boy John Rice to appear as an angel of gladness with a taper of frankincense, and deliver an eighteen-verse speech by Ben Jonson as part of the entertainment of James by the Merchant Taylors at their hall.[613] During the summer the company travelled to Barnstaple, to Dunwich, to Oxford, where they were on 7 September, and possibly to Cambridge. Volpone had probably been given in both Universities before its publication about February 1607 or 1608.
During the winter of 1607–8 the company gave thirteen Court plays, on 26, 27, and 28 December 1606, and on 2, 6, 7, 9, 17, and 26 January, and 2 and 7 February 1607. On each of the nights of 6 and 17 January there were two plays. In 1608 was published A Yorkshire Tragedy, with Shakespeare’s name on the title-page, and to it I assign the production of Pericles, in which Shakespeare probably had Wilkins for a collaborator. About May the company had to find their share of the heavy fine necessary to buy off the inhibition due to the performance of Chapman’s Duke of Byron by the Queen’s Revels.[614] The year was in many ways an eventful one for the King’s men. They had, I suspect, to face a growing detachment of Shakespeare from London and the theatre; and the loss was perhaps partly supplied by the establishment of relations with Beaumont and Fletcher, whose earliest play for the company, Philaster, may be of any date from 1608 to 1610. About 16 August died William Sly, leaving his interest in the Globe to his son Robert and legacies to Cuthbert Burbadge and James Sands. Both he and Henry Condell had been admitted to an interest at some date subsequent to November 1606, the moiety of the lease not retained by the Burbadges having been redistributed into sixths to allow of this. The deserts of Pope, Phillips, and Sly are all commemorated in the Apology of Thomas Heywood, which, though not published until 1612, was probably written in 1608.[615] Sly’s death complicated an important transaction in which the King’s men were engaged. This was the acquisition of the Blackfriars, of which the freehold already belonged to the Burbadges, but which had been leased since 1600 to Henry Evans and occupied by the Children of the Revels. About July 1608 Evans was prepared to surrender his lease, and the Burbadges decided to take the opportunity of providing the King’s men with a second house on the north side of the Thames, suitable for a winter head-quarters. As in the case of the Globe, they shared their interest as housekeepers with some of the leading members of the company. New leases were executed on 9 August 1608, by which the house was divided between a syndicate of seven, of whom five were Richard Burbadge, Shakespeare, Heminges, Condell, and Sly, while the other two, Cuthbert Burbadge and Thomas Evans, were not King’s men. When Sly’s death intervened, his executrix surrendered his interest and the number of the syndicate was reduced to six. Probably, however, the King’s men did not enter upon the actual occupation of the Blackfriars until the autumn of the following year.[616] In fact the plague kept the London theatres closed from July 1608 to December 1609. The King’s men were at Coventry on 29 October 1608 and at Marlborough in the course of 1607–8. The plague did not prevent them from appearing at Court during the winter of 1608–9, and they gave twelve plays on unspecified dates. But their difficulties are testified to by a special reward ‘for their private practise in the time of infeccion’, which had rendered their Christmas service possible.
The plague led to an early provincial tour. The company were at Ipswich on 9 May, at Hythe on 16 May, and at New Romney on 17 May 1609. Their winter season was again interfered with, and a further grant was made in respect of six weeks of private practice. Amongst the plays so practised may, I think, have been Cymbeline. They gave thirteen plays at Court on unspecified dates during the holidays of 1609–10.[617] One of these may have been Mucedorus, the edition of which with the imprint 1610 represents a revised version performed at Court on the previous Shrove Sunday. This might be either 18 February 1610 or 3 February 1611. The epilogue contains an apology for some recent indiscretion of the company in a play of which no more is known, but which might conceivably be Daborne’s A Christian Turned Turk, since this certainly brought its players into some disgrace. By April the company were at the Globe, playing Macbeth on 20 April, Cymbeline probably shortly before, and Othello on 30 April.[618] To this year I assign The Winter’s Tale and Beaumont and Fletcher’s The Maid’s Tragedy. It also saw the production of Jonson’s Alchemist, with a cast including Burbadge, Lowin, Condell, Cooke, Armin, Heminges, William Ostler, John Underwood, Tooley, and William Ecclestone. This is the last mention of Armin in connexion with the King’s men, but it is sufficient to show that the production of his Two Maids of Moreclack by the King’s Revels about 1608 did not involve any breach with his old company. Of Ecclestone’s origin nothing is known.[619] Ostler and Underwood came from the Queen’s Revels, probably when the Blackfriars was taken over in 1609. In fact an account of the transaction given by the Burbadges in 1635 suggests that the desire to acquire these boys was its fundamental motive. They say:
‘In processe of time, the boyes growing up to bee men, which were Underwood, Field, Ostler, and were taken to strengthen the King’s service; and the more to strengthen the service, the boyes dayly wearing out, it was considered that house would bee as fitt for ourselves, and soe purchased the lease remaining from Evans with our money, and placed men players, which were Heminges, Condall, Shakspeare, &c.’
This narrative seems, however, to have antedated matters as regards Field. Or, if he did come to the King’s men in 1609, he almost immediately returned to the Queen’s Revels at Whitefriars, joining the King’s again about 1616.[620]
About 8 May 1610 some superfluous apparel of the company was sold by Heminges on their behalf to the Duke of York’s men (q.v.). On 31 May Burbadge and Rice were employed by the City to make speeches on fish-back at the civic pageant of welcome to Prince Henry.[621] The autumn travelling took the company to Dover between 6 July and 4 August 1610, to Oxford in August, and to Shrewsbury and Stafford in 1609–10. During the following winter they gave fifteen Court plays on unspecified days. They were playing a piece on the story of Richard II, not now extant, at the Globe on 30 April 1611, and A Winter’s Tale on 15 May.[622] During 1611 Jonson’s Catiline was produced, with a cast similar to that of The Alchemist, except that Armin was replaced by Richard Robinson, whose earlier history is unknown. Robinson, playing a female part, and Robert Gough also appear in the stage directions of The Second Maiden’s Tragedy, licensed for the stage by Sir George Buck on 31 October 1611. Gough was probably one of Strange’s men in 1592. He appears in the wills of Pope in 1603 and of Phillips, who was his brother-in-law, in 1605, but with no indication that he belonged to the King’s men. Beaumont and Fletcher’s A King and No King was also licensed by Buck in 1611, and to this year I assign Shakespeare’s Tempest. On 25 August 1611 the interest in the Blackfriars originally intended for Sly was assigned to Ostler. Ecclestone, on the other hand, later in the year than the production of Catiline, but before 29 August, left the company for the Lady Elizabeth’s men.