George Washington University Henry Carey's Peculiar Letter Author(s): Andrew Gurr Source: Shakespeare Quarterly, Vol. 56, No. 1 (Spring, 2005), pp. 51-75 Published by: Folger Shakespeare Library in association with George Washington University Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3844026 . Accessed: 22/08/2011 12:27 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Folger Shakespeare Library and George Washington University are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Shakespeare Quarterly. http://www.jstor.org Henry Carey'sPeculiar Letter ANDREW GURR IN NOVEMBER1596 RESIDENTS OF THE LIBERTYOF THE BLACKFRIARSasked the Privy Council to stop James Burbage and his company at the Theatre from using his new playhouse in their precinct. This well-known petition contains some puz- zling statements. The petitioners complained, for instance, that ... all playersbeing banished by the Lord Mayor from playingwithin the Cittie by reason of the great inconveniencesand ill rule that followeth them, they now thincke to plant them selves in liberties.1 What seems strange here is not the company's plan to start growing in the liberty of Blackfriars, but the claim that the Lord Mayor had recently banned playing inside the city. No papers survive to say when or even that such a ban was issued. The authority that normally sent out such orders was not London's mayor but the Privy Council, acting for the monarch. Yet the thirty-four petitioners-residents of the afflicted liberty-should have known what they were saying. They were led by Lady Elizabeth Russell, sister-in-law to William Cecil, Lord Burghley, who chaired the Privy Council. The others included Richard Field, the printer from Stratford who had issued Shakespeare's narrative poems in 1593 and 1594. Though the claim that the Lord Mayor had banned playing in the city does echo twenty years of may- oral complaints to the Privy Council, it is distinctly mysterious. Just which Lord Mayor was it who took authority to initiate this unique ban on playing inside the city? Had the Privy Council, which had resisted Guildhall's pleas before, nothing to say about it and no say in it? Henry Carey, the first Lord Hunsdon, Lord Chamberlain, and the Privy Council member who might have been most concerned, had died in July, some months before the petitioners set down their complaint. Burbage's new indoor playhouse was built for use by the company that Carey himself had set up in May 1594 as the Lord Chamberlain's Men. At the time of the petition, William Brooke, Lord Cobham, Carey's successor as Lord Chamberlain, was less interested in help- ing Carey's company, now the second Lord Hunsdon's; it may even have been Brooke's objection that, in the same year as the petition, made them change the 1 E. K. Chambers,The ElizabethanStage, 4 vols. (Oxford:Clarendon Press, 1923), 4:319-20. 52 SHAKESPEARE QUARTERLY name of their most celebrated new creation, Sir John Oldcastle, to Sir John Falstaff.2Brooke, himself a resident of the Blackfriarsprecinct, was unsympathet- ic to the company'sscheme, as was the younger Carey,since his signatureappears on the petition immediatelybelow Lady Russell's.Both Brookeand George Carey would surelyhave known whether or not the Lord Mayorhad recentlymanaged to impose a ban on playinginside the city. Asking why the petitionersshould haveattributed such a ban to the LordMayor ratherthan to the PrivyCouncil takes us back deep into the story of a power strug- gle that entangledShakespeare's company through its first years.I believe the ban may have been laid down in May 1594, when Henry Carey as Lord Chamberlain and Charles Howard, the Lord Admiral,first set up their two new companies.In effect,I think, the Lord Chamberlain'sand the LordAdmiral's Men were createdby their patrons as a duopoly to replacethe monopoly of the former Queen'sMen. I have written elsewhereabout their scheme to createa pair of new companiesand give them fixedplaying places in the suburbs.3It was then, I believe,that they agreed to accepta ban on playinginside the city and to send their two companiesoff to play only in the suburbs.There the Lord Admiralwas in authority,and two playhouses, the Rose (in Surrey) and the Theatre (in Middlesex),were alreadyin regularuse. Confiningplaying to the suburbsof Middlesexand Surreywould keep it out of the Lord Mayor'sjurisdiction, and as a result, they no doubt hoped, might halt the streamof mayoralpleas to ban all playingeverywhere. The idea that Carey and Howard, in concert with the Lord Mayor,set up an agreementin 1594 for playingin and around London has significantimplications. While in the absenceof key documentssuch an idea is only a hypothesis,the clear- est readingof the evidencesuggests that the two authoritiesof centraland city gov- ernmentworked together to settle their differencesover which locationsthe profes- sional playing companiescould use then and in the future.That hypothesis,con- sideredalong with the survivingdocuments, also suggeststhat the agreedsolution continuedto be an issue after the two companiesbegan playing in 1594. The story of the Privy Council and city government'spower struggle over plays colors this reading. 2 See, for instance,Gary Taylor,"The Fortunes of Oldcastle,"Shakespeare Survey 38 (1985): 85-100. 3 See Gurr,"Privy Councilors as theatre patrons"in Shakespeareand TheatricalPatronage in Early ModernEngland, Paul Whitfield White and Suzanne R. Westfall,eds. (Cambridge:Cambridge UP, 2002), 221-45. Charles Howard was Lord Chamberlainthrough 1584 until he became the Lord Admiral,when the chamberlainshippassed to Carey,his father-in-law.The term duopolyfor the two companies is Richard Dutton's, though he cautiously marks it as not affirmed until 1598 in the Privy Council's surviving orders (Masteringthe Revels. The Regulationand Censorshipof English RenaissanceDrama [Iowa City: U of Iowa P, 1991], 111). I offer a summary of some of the conse- quences of establishing a duopoly in 1594 in The ShakespeareCompany 1594-1642 (Cambridge: CambridgeUP, 2004), 1-40. HENRY CAREY'S PECULIAR LETTER 53 Seen from a long historicalperspective, the successof Shakespeare'scompany in the yearsfollowing its creationappears an obvious step in the unstoppablegrowth of professionalplaying and the production of the great plays they contributedto English (and later global) culture.The political maneuverssurrounding the duop- oly'sestablishment, however, suggest that their creationwas far more riskyand their success more doubtful than we would like to think. That the Lord Chamberlain's Men were denied the use of an indoor playhouse in the Blackfriarsuntil 1608 affirmsthat risk. Extantpapers from the 1570s onwardshow that quite a few may- ors had unsuccessfullypleaded with the Privy Council to ban playingin London.4 They were forcedto pleadbecause it was the Council that issued ordersabout play- ing, as it did for all theaterclosures resulting from increasesin the numberof plague deaths. Survivingletters show the Council allowing playing, for instance, on 23 December 1578 (a letter also going to the magistratesof Middlesex and Surrey, where the custom-builtplayhouses stood), 18 November and 3 December 1581, 11 April 1582, and 26 November 1583. Banningor stayingorders, mostly because of plague,survive from 7 May 1587, 25 July 1591, 28 January1593 (for plague,includ- ing Middlesex and Surrey),and 3 February1594. After 1594, ordersabout playing went only to magistratesin the two counties,bypassing the city itself.5I suspectthat somethinghappened in that year,in a strangeconsonance with the Blackfriarspeti- tion, which allowedthe PrivyCouncil to stop regulatingplaying inside the city even as it continuedto close other public venues in an attempt to limit the spreadof the plague. What may be the key document in the strugglebetween the pro-playingPrivy Councillorsand the anti-playingmayoralty is preservedin the Remembranciaof the City of London, a patchy but vital transcriptionof letters written to and from Guildhall.This collection includes a copy of a letter sent on 8 October 1594 by Lord ChamberlainHenry Carey from his Privy Council office at Nonsuch Palace to the Lord Mayor,Sir RichardMartin, at the Guildhall.6The letter implies that Shakespeare'scompany wanted an indoor playhouse from the outset; it may also explain why Lady Russell and her co-signatoriesbelieved that it was the Lord Mayor who had stopped playing inside the city. Composed less than five months afterCarey's playing company had been established,while the first chill of the com- ing winterwas in the air,it delivereda blunt requestin his characteristicallycurt and businesslikemanner. 4 See Chambers,4:271-316. 5 Chambers,4:319, 325, 332-33. 6 The letter from Carey to Martin is reprinted in MaloneSociety Collections: Part I (Oxford: The Malone Society, 1907- ), 1:1,73-74, hereaftercited as MSC.The Remembranciawere the recordskept by the City Remembrancer,who from 1586 to 1605 was Giles Fletcher. Of the nine volumes, Volume 1 covers 1579 to 1592, and Volume 2 covers 1593 to 1609. 54 SHAKESPEAREQUARTERLY After my hartie comendacions,where