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7 The Repertoire of the Renaissance Playing Companies Brian Jay Corrigan INTRODUCTION In the process of a decades-long labor of love I call The Compendium of Renaissance Drama, I have been able, perhaps for the first time, to create several comprehensive lists of extant plays in their original settings. Several years ago one such series of lists, covering playhouses and their repertoires, appeared in Discoveries, and I offer now another series of lists indicating playing companies and their repertoires. This compendium is now online at cord.ung.edu. These lists are a comprehensive reflection of the place of extant plays in the repertoires of the various playing companies, adult and children, from the time of Westminster’s Boys (1564) until the closing of the theatres in 1642. Company histories are taken from Gurr and from my own notes to be found also online in the Compendium of Renaissance Drama. Companies are listed alphabetically while the plays are listed below each company chronologically. The dates listed are keyed to Harbage and Schoenbaum’s Annals and are therefore only approximate. A question mark before an entry indicates there is debate over whether the company in question performed that play. A question mark after a date indicates doubt that the play in question was performed at or around that date. The note [later] indicates that the play is known or thought to have been performed by that company but in a year sometime after its original production. The following lists will contain repetitions where a play is known or strongly suspected to have been performed by more than one company. 7 Discoveries 27.1 (2010): 7-32 8 I. ADULT COMPANY REPERTOIRES THE ADMIRAL’S MEN The Admiral’s Men date from 1585. It was in 1585 that their patron, Charles Howard, second baron Howard of Effingham (1536–1624), was appointed Lord High Admiral. He was first cousin to Anne Boleyn and married Elizabeth’s cousin and confidante, Katherine Carey. The company he patronized inhabited various playhouses in succession: the Theatre, Newington Butts, Rose, and Fortune. Their business practice is well chronicled thanks to Philip Henslowe’s Diary, a diurnal account of the company and its players. Discovery in 1989 of the western three- quarters of the company’s most famous playhouse, the Rose, has enhanced modern understanding of this company. In 2002 the remaining eastern portion was also uncovered, making the Rose the only playhouse foundation from the period to have been entirely unearthed. The Admiral’s Company’s chief actor was Henslowe’s step son–in–law, Edward “Ned” Alleyn. The company technically changed its name to Nottingham’s Men when in 1597 Charles Howard earned that title. Nevertheless, modern prejudice favors the title Admiral’s Men from 1585 to 1603 when players came under the purview of the Royal Household and the company patronage was assumed by the Stuart heir apparent, Prince Henry. See also Prince Henry’s Men and Palsgrave’s (Palatine’s) Men. After fire destroyed their playhouse, the Fortune, in 1621–and after it was rebuilt in 1623–the remnants of the company merged with the King and Queen of Bohemia’s Men in 1626. PLAYS The Spanish Tragedy (1587) 1 Tamburlaine (1587) The Two Angry Women of Abington (1588) The Wounds of Civil War, or Marius and Scilla (1588) The Battle of Alcazar (1589) 2 Tamburlaine (1589) ? John a Kent and John a Cumber (1589) The Dead Man’s Fortune (1590) [later] Doctor Faustus (1592) 8 Discoveries 27.1 (2010): 7-32 9 A Knack to Know an Honest Man (1594) ? Two Lamentable Tragedies (1594) I Tamar Cam (1596) A Tale of a Tub (1596/1633) The Blind Beggar of Alexandria (Irus) (1596) Captain Thomas Stukeley (1596) Frederick and Basilea (1597) An Humorous Day’s Mirth (1597) The Downfall of Robert, Earl of Huntingdon (1 Robin Hood) (1598) The Death of Robert, Earl of Huntingdon (2 Robin Hood) (1598) Englishmen for my Money, or A Woman Will Have Her Will (1598) Look About You (1599) Old Fortunatus (1599) The Shoemaker’s Holiday (1599) 1 Sir John Oldcastle (1599) Troilus and Cressida (1599) 1 The Blind Beggar of Bednal Green (1 Tom Stroud) (1600) The Four Prentices of London (1600) Patient Grissil (1600) The Spanish Moor’s Tragedy (1600) ? Lust’s Dominion, or The Lascivious Queen (1600) ? The Devil and His Dame (1600) 2 Fortune’s Tennis (1602) Hoffman, or A Revenge for a Father (1602) ? The Family of Love (1602) ?The Noble Spanish Soldier (The Noble Soldier, or A Contract Broken Justly Revenged) (1626) AMATEURS AT COURT The Queen of Aragon (Cleodora) (1640) AMATEURS AT SURRENDEN Henry IV (1623) THE CHAMBERLAIN’S MEN Henry Carey, Lord Hunsdon, sponsored a company between 1564 and 1566. It is not until 1576 that they appear again. They 9 Discoveries 27.1 (2010): 7-32 10 played in York 8 September 1580 and appeared in court 27 December 1582. Sussex, Lord Chamberlain, died in 1583. The title Lord Chamberlain passed first to Charles Howard (Lord Effingham and later Lord Admiral) before it passed to his father-in-law Henry Carey in July 1585. In this role, Carey supported the Queen’s Men as the only court playing company until 1594 when the Lord Chamberlain’s Men came into being. PLAYS [later] The Two Gentlemen of Verona (1593) ? The Taming of the Shrew (1594) [later] Love’s Labours Lost (1595) Richard II (1595) ? Romeo and Juliet (1595) ? Sir Thomas More (fragment) (1595) A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1596) King John (1596) The Merchant of Venice (1596) 1 Henry IV (1597) 2 Henry IV (1597) Every Man in His Humor (1598) Much Ado About Nothing (1598) As You Like It (1599) Henry V (1599) Julius Caesar (1599) A Larum for London, or The Siege of Antwerp (1599) A Warning for Fair Women (1599) The Merry Wives of Windsor (1600) Twelfth Night, or What You Will (1600) Thiomas Lord Cromwell (1600) Hamlet (1601) Satiromastix, or The Untrussing of the Humorous Poet (1601) All’s Well That Ends Well (1602) Merry Devil of Edmonton (1602) Troilus and Cressida (1602) ? Timon of Athens [1607] 10 Discoveries 27.1 (2010): 7-32 11 DERBY’S MEN Ferdinando, Lord Strange, had a company of players dating back to the 1570s. By 1591 Lord Strange’s Men, gave an unprecedented six performances at court during the 1591-92 season. They went to the Rose in 1592, where one of their members, Edward Alleyn, married Henslowe’s daughter. This may have been in part responsible for their stay at the Rose for five months from February to June 1592–perhaps the longest single tenure for a company at a single playhouse to that date. In September 1593, Fernando Stanley succeeded his brother as earl of Derby. This is when the company became Derby’s Men. He died, however, 16 April 1594. After that time, the earl’s widow took charge of the players, and we have a record of them performing under her name on 16 May 1594. By then, however, the original Derby company had been greatly subsumed into the Chamberlain’s and Admiral’s companies. PLAY The Rare Triumphs of Love and Fortune (1582) 2 DERBY’S MEN After the death of Ferdinando Stanley, Lord Strange, fifth earl of Derby, (16 April 1594) the first Derby company seems to have been subsumed into the Chamberlain’s and Admiral’s companies. Derby’s widow sponsored what was probably a remnant or entirely new company at Winchester only a month later on 16 May 1594. The sixth earl of Derby, as with all the Stanleys before him, was a keen play fancier and sponsored the Second Derby’s company. He apparently even busied himself in June 1599 with “penning comedyes for the common players” (Peter Thomson, Shakespeare’s Career (Cambridge, 1992) p. 46). The Second Derby company apparently began as a provincial touring company. By 1599 they presented the first true competition to the ‘duopoly’ of the Chamberlain’s and Admiral’s players. They performed at court in February 1600 and twice in January 1601. Under the leadership of Robert Browne, the second Derby company tried to gain 11 Discoveries 27.1 (2010): 7-32 12 purchase of the London theatre world. They were under stiff competition from Worcester’s Men, and the two companies platooned between the Rose and Boar’s Head playhouses. By 1602, however, the Worcester’s company, strengthened by a merger with Oxford’s Men, gained complete possession of the Boar’s Head, though they soon left it for the Rose. Derby’s appears to have failed quickly after that, going into the provinces and disappearing from the record within two years. PLAYS [IN 1618?] Guy Earl of Warwick (1593) 1 Edward IV (1599) 2 Edward IV (1599) The Trial of Chivalry (The Gallant Cavaiero Dick Bowyer (1601) HENRIETTA’S MAIDS L’Artenice (Les Bergeries. The Queen’s Pastoral) (1626) KING’S MEN When James I decreed all playing companies come under royal sponsorship, he took over the former Lord Chamberlain’s Men himself. In 1603 the King’s Men owned a four-year-old playhouse, the Globe, and some of its members held the paper on another playhouse, the second Blackfriars. In 1608 the Blackfriars property ceased to be a children’s venue and reverted to the King’s Men. On 29 June 1613 the Globe amphitheatre burned to the ground during a performance of Shakespeare and Fletcher’s All is True (Henry VIII). The playhouse was quickly rebuilt and reopened in 1614, suggesting the financial strength or at least the popularity of the company.
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