The lists of 1620 and 1626 do not bear out Fleay’s assumption that the repertories they represent were wholly made up of plays taken out by Browne in 1592.[863]
Another member of Browne’s last expedition can perhaps be identified. With him in 1592 had been Richard Jones, who afterwards became one of the Admiral’s men in 1594 and left that company in 1602. He was again associated with Browne in Rosseter’s Queen’s Revels syndicate of 1610. The following undated letter to Edward Alleyn is preserved at Dulwich:[864]
Mr Allen, I commend my love and humble duty to you, geving you thankes for your great bounty bestoed vpon me in my sicknes, when I was in great want, God blese you for it, Sir, this it is, I am to go over beyond the seeas with Mr Browne and the company, but not by his meanes, for he is put to half a shaer, and to stay hear, for they ar all against his goinge. Now good Sir, as you have ever byne my worthie frend, so healp me nowe. I have a sut of clothes and a cloke at pane for three pound, and if it shall pleas you to lend me so much to release them I shalbe bound to pray for you so longe as I leve, for if I go over and have no clothes, I shall not be esteemed of, and by godes help the first mony that I gett I will send it over vnto you, for hear I get nothinge, some tymes I have a shillinge a day, and some tymes nothinge, so that I leve in great poverty hear, and so I humbly take my leave, prainge to god I and my wiffe for your health and mistris Allenes, which god continew,
Your poor frend to command Richard Jones.
[Endorsed] Receved of master Allen the of February the somme of [and by Alleyn] Mr Jones his letter wher on I lent hym 3l.
This has generally been dated 1592. But Alleyn’s first recorded marriage was in October of that year, and the reference to Browne as not going with the company has always been a puzzle. I suspect that it was written in or near 1615, and that Jones was one of the actors who started in advance of Browne under John Green. That he did travel about this time is shown by two other letters to Alleyn about a lease of the Leopard’s Head in Shoreditch held by his wife.[865] The first, from Jones himself, is not dated, but a mention of Henslowe shows that it was written before the latter’s death on 6 January 1616, or at least before Jones had heard of that event. The writer and his wife were then out of England. The second, from Harris Jones, was written from Danzig on 1 April 1620. Mrs. Jones was then expecting to join her husband, who was with ‘the prince’, whoever this may have been. If Jones had travelled with Browne’s men, he cut himself adrift from them on their return, for in 1622 he entered as a musician the service of Philip Julius, Duke of Wolgast in Pomerania (1592–1625), who had twice visited England, and whose presence at more than one London theatre is recorded in 1602.[866] Two petitions from Jones are in the Stettin archives.[867] On 30 August 1623 he asked permission, with his fellows Johan Kostrassen and Robert Dulandt (Dowland?), to return from Wolgast to England. Behind them they appear to have left Richard Farnaby, son of the better-known composer Giles Farnaby.[868] On 10 July 1624 Jones wrote to the Duke that his hopes of profitable employment under the Prince in England had been disappointed, and asked to be taken back into his service.
All the groups of actors hitherto dealt with seem to have had their origin, more or less directly, in the untiring initiative of Robert Browne. There is, however, another tradition, almost as closely associated with the houses of Brandenburg and Saxony, as the former with those of Hesse-Cassel and Brunswick. Some give and take between Cassel and the Courts of some of the Brandenburg princes has from time to time been noted.[869] But Berlin, where the successive Electors of Brandenburg, Joachim Frederick (1598–1608) and John Sigismund (1608–9), had their capital, was during a long period of years the head-quarters from which an Englishman, John Spencer, undertook extensive travels, both in Protestant and in Catholic Germany. Of Spencer’s stage-career in London, if he ever had one, nothing is known. Possibly he betook himself to the Brandenburg Court during the English plague-year of 1603. At any rate, comedians holding a recommendation given by the Elector on 10 August 1604 and confirmed by the Stadtholder of the Netherlands, Maurice Prince of Orange Nassau, in the following December, were at Leyden in January and The Hague in May 1605.[870] It is reasonable to identify them with the company under John Spencer, who received a recommendation from the Electress Eleonora of Brandenburg to the Elector Christian II of Saxony (1591–1611) in the same year.[871] At Dresden they possibly remained for some time, for although there are several anonymous appearances, including the famous ones at Gräz in the winter of 1607–8, which can be conjecturally assigned to them,[872] they do not clearly emerge until April 1608, when a visit of the Electoral players of Saxony is recorded at Cologne.[873] Subsequently they waited upon Francis, Duke of Stettin and by him were recommended to the new Elector of Brandenburg, John Sigismund, who passed them on once more to the Elector of Saxony on 14 July 1609.[874] Being in need of comedians for his brother’s wedding in the same year, he applied, as has been noted, for a loan of those of Maurice of Hesse.[875] Dresden remained the head-quarters of Spencer’s men again during the next two years, but in 1611 they were back in John Sigismund’s service. Christian II of Saxony died in this year. In July and August they visited Danzig and Königsberg, and in October and November they attended the Elector to Ortelsburg and Königsberg for the ceremonies in connexion with the acknowledgement of him as heir to his father-in-law, Duke Albert Frederick of Prussia. On this occasion Spencer was at the head of not less than nineteen actors and sixteen musicians, and produced an elaborate Turkish ‘Triumph-comedy’.[876] In April 1613 Spencer left Berlin on a tour which was to take him to Dresden once more.[877] The company were at Nuremberg in June, still using the name of the Elector of Brandenburg and playing Philole and Mariana, Celinde and Sedea, The Fall of Troy, The Fall of Constantinople, and The Turk.[878] In July and August they were at Augsburg, and in September they returned to Nuremberg, now describing themselves as the Elector of Saxony’s company.[879] This Elector was John George I (1611–56), the third of his house to entertain an English company. In October they played The Fall of Constantinople at the Reichstag held by the Emperor Mathias at Regensburg. Spencer was their leader, but they no longer claimed any courtly status.[880] After an unsuccessful attempt to pay a third visit for the year to Nuremberg, they went to Rothenburg, and so to Heidelberg, whither the Elector Palatine Frederick V had just brought his English bride. Here they spent the winter, and left to attend the Frankfort fair of Easter 1614.[881] In May their service with the Elector of Brandenburg, although now none of the most recent, helped them to get a footing in Strassburg, where they stayed until July and again played The Fall of Constantinople, as well as a play of Government.[882] In August they were at Augsburg and possibly Ulm.[883] In October they projected a return visit to Strassburg, but were rejected, ‘so dies Jar hie lang genug super multorum opinionem gewessen’.[884] Possibly they fell back upon Stuttgart.[885] In February 1615 they were in Cologne, and here a queer thing happened. The whole company, with Spencer’s wife and children, was converted to Catholicism by the eloquence of a Franciscan friar. The event is recorded in the town archives and also in a manuscript Franciscan chronicle preserved in the British Museum:[886]
‘Twentie fowre stage players arrive out of Ingland at Collen: all Inglish except one Germanian and one Dutchman. All Protestants. Betwixt those and father Francis Nugent disputation was begunne and protracted for the space of 7 or eight dayes consecutively; all of them meeting at one place together. The chiefe among them was one N. Spencer, a proper sufficient man. In fine, all and each of them beeing clearlie convinced, they yielded to the truth; but felt themselves so drie and roughharted that they knew not how to pass from the bewitching Babylonian harlot to their true mother the Catholic church, that always pure and virginal spouse of the lamb.’
It need hardly be said that in so Catholic a city as Cologne this singular act of grace gave the performances of the English comedians an extraordinary vogue. In June and July 1615 Spencer was at Strassburg, in company with one Christopher Apileutter, who may have been the Germanian or the Dutchman of the Cologne notice.[887] He attended the autumn fair at Frankfort, using an imperial patent, perhaps given him at Regensburg in 1613.[888] During the winter of 1615–16 he was again in Cologne, still profiting by his conversion.[889] This, however, had not made of him such a bigot, as to be unable to render acceptable duty in the Protestant courts where his earliest successes had been won. For a year his movements became obscure. But in August 1617 he was playing before the Elector of Saxony and the Emperor Matthias at Dresden.[890] And in the following year he once more entered the Brandenburg service. During the interval which had elapsed since 1613, John Sigismund had entertained another company. Early in 1614 he engaged William, Abraham, and Jacob Pedel, Robert Arzschar, Behrendt Holzhew, and August Pflugbeil.[891] The names hardly sound English; but Jacob Pedel is probably the Jacob Behel or Biel who was travelling with Sackville in 1597, William Pedel appeared as an English pantomimist at Leyden in November 1608, and Arzschar, whose correct name was doubtless Archer, is also described as an Englishman at Frankfort in the autumn of 1608.[892] He was then in company with Heinrich Greum and Rudolph Beart. A Burchart Bierdt appeared as ‘Englischer Musicant’ at Cologne in December 1612.[893] Archer perhaps came from Nuremberg. He was at Frankfort again in the autumn of 1610, and at the Reichstag held by the Emperor Matthias at Regensburg in September 1613.[894] It must have been this new company under Archer which visited Wolfenbüttel in September 1614 and Danzig in 1615, styling themselves the Brandenburg comedians.[895] The only names given at Danzig are Johann Friedrich Virnius and Bartholomeus Freyerbott, and in fact the Pedels, Holzhew, and Pflugbeil left Berlin at Easter 1615. Archer himself remained with the Elector until May 1616. The field, then, was clear at Berlin for the enterprise of Spencer. On 17 March 1618 John Sigismund made a payment ‘to one Stockfisch’ for bringing the English comedians from Elbing. Further payments to the English are recorded in the following November, and in June 1619 for plays at Königsberg and Balge in Prussia, of which the Elector had become Duke on the death of his father-in-law Albert Frederick in the preceding August.[896] In July 1619 the Elector of Brandenburg’s comedians are heard of at Danzig.[897] On 23 December 1619 John Sigismund himself died, and in 1620 Hans Stockfisch addressed an appeal for certain arrears of salary to Count Adam von Schwartzenberg, an officer at the court of the new Elector George William (1619–40), in which he claimed to have enjoyed the Count’s protection for more than fifteen years. In reply George William describes the petitioner as ‘den Englischen Junkher Hans Stockfisch, wie er sich nennet’.[898] There can be little doubt that Hans Stockfisch was none other than John Spencer, for the period of fifteen years precisely takes us back to his first appearance as a Brandenburg comedian in 1605. His fish name corresponds to, and was perhaps motived by, that of Pickleherring adopted by Robert Reinolds of the chief rival English company about the same date. Both had their prototype in Sackville’s John Bouset.[899] The Elector George William was no friend to actors, and to Spencer, as to others, the Thirty Years’ War closed many doors. In February 1623 he came to Nuremberg with Sebastian Schadleutner, but was not allowed to play.[900] And that is the last that is heard of him.
A few isolated records indicate the presence from time to time in northern Europe of players not yet mentioned, and not obviously connected either with the Browne or with the Spencer tradition. An English company under Peter de Prun of Brussels visited Nuremberg in April 1594. The name of the leader does not sound very English, and a company, not improbably the same, is described as ‘niederländische’ at Ulm in the following August. Heywood, however, speaks of an English company as in the pay of the Cardinal and Archduke Albert, Governor of the Spanish Netherlands, about 1608.[901] Maurice of Orange-Nassau, Stadtholder of the Dutch Netherlands (1584–1625), who gave a recommendation to Spencer in 1605, had also an English company of his own, which visited Frankfort at Easter 1611, and then claimed to be strange in Germany.[902] To Augsburg in June 1602 came Fabian Penton and his company;[903] to Leyden in September 1604 John Woods and his company,[904] and to Leipzig in April 1613 Hans Leberwurst with his boys.[905] Of none of these is anything further known, nor of William Alexander Blank, a Scottish dancer, who performed at Cologne in April 1605.[906]