Duopoly

But it lasted only briefly and by the middle of June the Admiral’s Men moved to the Rose and the Chamberlain’s Men to the Theatre. This was the beginning of what has come to be called the duopoly of these two companies in London playing. How exactly it came about is a matter for some debate. Andrew Gurr has argued most vigorously that it was engineered by the Privy Council – most specifically Lord Chamberlain Hunsdon and his son‐in‐law, Lord Admiral Howard – to continue the policy first evident in the creation of the Queen’s Men:

In effect, the Lord Admiral and the Lord Chamberlain worked together to set up a pair of new companies to replace the now divided Queen’s Men. Setting up two companies was a better guarantee for the supply of the Queen’s plays each Christmas than one had been. They drew the player membership from some of the major companies which had recently lost their patrons. They based the new groupings on the two chief impresarios who owned playhouses in the suburbs, James Burbage and Philip Henslowe, and their heirs, Richard Burbage and Edward Alleyn. They resolved the chronic problem of relations with the city by banning all playing from city inns, and instead specified as the only authorized playing places Henslowe’s Rose and Burbage’s Theatre. Henceforth the companies were denied any access to playing within the Lord Mayor’s bailiwick.

(Gurr 2002, 236–7; see also Gurr, 1996, chapter 4)

But we do not have the documentation for such Privy Council action as we do for the creation of the Queen’s Men, and there have been several objections to the scenario Gurr outlines. Roslyn Knutson, for example, has argued that the two companies emerged this way by a process of friendly commercial rivalry rather than political fiat (2001, 8–9). And Holger Schott Syme has objected that Gurr builds inferences (such as that popularity at court equates with popularity in the public playhouses, or that it was specific policy to restrict the number of settled London companies to two) for which there is simply no evidence (2010). Gurr in effect argues from outcomes. It is certainly the case that these were the only two companies invited to perform at court in the seasons from 1594/5 to 1598/9 and they remained by some margin the dominant figures there until the end of the reign. It is less certain that the Rose and the Theatre were explicitly the only playing places to be allowed; the Curtain remained available and in 1595 Francis Langley, a goldsmith, built the Swan some distance downriver from the Rose and with others converted the Boar’s Head Inn in Whitechapel into a true theatre in 1598/9 (see Figure 3.2). He presumably would not have done this if there was no question of their use by actors. On the other hand, the Swan project went seriously awry in 1597 and the Boar’s Head was only successful for a short time. Other companies clearly did play in London from time to time, but it took serious patronage to allow them to settle there for prolonged periods or to gain access to court. On the question of playing in the city inns (the Boar’s Head was outside the city): if there was an agreement with the city authorities to end this in 1594 Hunsdon himself broke it as early as that October with a request for his Lord Chamberlain’s Men to be allowed to use the Cross Keys that winter (p. 114). Most scholars agree that the practice had indeed ceased by 1596, but even that has been disputed (Menzer, 2006b).

Image described by caption.

Figure 3.2 A map showing the London theatres of Shakespeare’s day.

Source: First published in Shakespeare’s Playhouses, J. Q. Adams (1917).

I will add this one observation to the controversy, which I have not seen voiced elsewhere. At some point in the 1590s, it became normal for plays in public playhouses to start at 2 p.m. Thomas Platter confirms this in 1599: “And thus every day at two o’clock in the afternoon in … London two and sometimes three comedies are performed at separate places wherewith folk make merry together” (EPF, 413). It is not clear if this included those festival holy‐days which we noticed in respect of Newington Butts.3 They had for years been a source of friction in negotiations between the Privy Council and the City of London authorities. On these days (and perhaps others) evensong was observed, between 2 p.m. and perhaps 4 p.m., and the Privy Council had respected a condition that playing should not clash with it. In the 1574 royal patent that Leicester’s Men received, for example, it was an express condition that they should not play “in the time of common prayer” (ES, 2: 88).

In 1582 the Privy Council tried to argue with the Lord Mayor that playing should be allowed “after evening prayer, as long as the season of the year may permit” (ES, 4: 288; my emphasis). The Lord Mayor, however, replied that this could “very hardly be done. For though they begin not their plays till after evening prayer, yet all the time of the afternoon before they take in hearers and fill the place with such as be thereby absent from serving God at Church … if for remedy hereof I should also restrain the letting in of the people till after service in the Church, it would drive the action of their plays into very inconvenient time of night …” (ibid.). In 1584 the Queen’s Men petitioned the Common Council of London for greater freedom to perform in the City, citing in turn the inconvenience of playing into the night. This drew sarcasm when the Council explained their response to the Privy Council:

If in winter the dark do carry inconvenience, and the short time of day after evening prayer do leave them no leisure, and foulness of season do hinder the passage into the fields to plays, the remedy is ill‐conceived to bring them into London, but the true remedy is to leave of that unnecessary expense of time, whereunto God himself giveth so many impediments. (ES, 4: 301)

We hear no more of this quarrel in the 1590s. And the first we hear of 2 p.m. as a regular start time for playing is that 1594 letter, mentioned above, in which Lord Chamberlain Hunsdon asked permission for his new company of players to perform at the Cross Keys, which stipulated that “where heretofore they began not their plays till towards four o’clock, they will now begin at two and have done between four and five” (ES, 4: 316). It is not clear if the previous start time of 4 p.m. applied only to holy‐days, in order to avoid evensong, but Hunsdon makes no discrimination at all – as if the 2 p.m. start will apply in all cases, in which case performances would be in direct conflict with evensong. But they would end in time to avoid what all parties recognized as a major inconvenience, for players, audiences, and authorities alike – performances that ran on into darkness. Might this speak to some kind of negotiated settlement between the Privy Council and the City fathers?4

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