4
My intention here is to give a sense of the organization of Shakespeare’s company and the personnel they would have employed at their various venues. As ever in the theatrical world it took many more people to stage a performance than just the actors, though the Chamberlain’s Men were distinctive, both in their own day and by later standards, for the level of control exercised by the principal actors.
The core of any major acting company were its sharers, the leading actors who would contract an agreement among themselves – with rules they were expected to follow in the business, and agreed penalties if they failed. We do not have a formal list of the sharers of the Lord Chamberlain’s Men when the company was first formed. Clearly Kemp, Burbage, and Shakespeare were among them, as payees at court. There is strong evidence, moreover, that four other former members of Strange’s Men (along with Kemp) were among them; John Heminge and George Bryan were the company’s payees at court the following year; and Heminge was accompanied by Thomas Pope in each of the three succeeding years. Augustine Phillips too was almost certainly an early sharer, because when the company fell under suspicion for having staged a play about Richard II on the eve of the Essex Rebellion in 1601, he was the man the authorities interrogated – that would not have been entrusted to a junior member (see p. 153). In Ben Jonson’s 1616 folio of his Works he lists the “principal comedians” in the company who performed his Every Man In His Humour in 1598; these include six of the seven I have already mentioned (Bryan is the one missing: see p. 157), plus Henry Condell, William Sly, Christopher Beeston, and John Duke.
These were not necessarily sharers at the outset, but Condell and Sly certainly acquired shares eventually. Beeston, who was later to be one of the most powerful theatrical impresarios, left the company not much later, as did Duke. An intriguing absence in all this – and something of a cipher throughout – is Richard Cowley. He had been with Strange’s Men when they toured in 1593, though not one of their sharers (see p. 63, 67). The first we hear of him with the Chamberlain’s Men is when he is identified with the role of Verges in Much Ado About Nothing in its 1600 quarto; the following year he was a payee at court and in 1603 was definitely a sharer in the King’s Men. But he appears in none of the actor lists that Jonson left with his plays for the company – Every Man In, Every Man Out, Sejanus, Volpone, The Alchemist, and Catiline. Some assume that he was a sharer from 1594 but we cannot be sure; see below (p. 206).
The Chamberlain’s Men, like most of the other major companies, were in essence a joint stock company. The sharers, or “fellows” as they were often known, each contributed an agreed sum to the capital of the company, to buy essential equipment (such as costumes and playbooks) and cover necessary expenses. The value of a share would vary with the fortunes of the company and the number of sharers, but it was recognized as owing to the sharer if he left the company or died. In 1613 Charles Massey, a long‐time member of the Admiral’s Men (Prince Henry’s Men after 1603) had cause to remind Philip Henslowe: “for sir I know you understand that there is the composition between our company that if any one give over with consent of his fellows, he is to receive three score and ten pounds (Anthony Jeffes hath had so much); if any one die his widow or friends whom he appoints is to receive fifty pounds (Mrs. Pavy and Mrs. Towne hath had the like)” (Greg, 1907, 64).1 In his 1635 will, John Shank, a leading sharer in what was by then the King’s Men exhorted his fellows: “do not abridge my said wife and executrix in the receiving of what is due unto me and my estate amongst them, as namely fifty pounds for my share in the stocks, books [i.e. play scripts], apparel, and other things according to the old custom and agreement amongst us” (Honigmann and Brock, 1995, 188).
These are quite substantial sums, even allowing for inflation – between four and seven times the £10 that William Ingram designated as a comfortable annual income around 1600 (see p. 16). It presumably explains why some players only achieved a half or even a quarter share. We know, for example, that in June 1595 Henslowe lent his improvident nephew, Francis, £9 “in ready money to lay down for his half share with the company which he doth play with” (Henslowe, 9). For legal purposes, however, the sharers were the company. Whenever a company was issued with a new patent or licence, it is the sharers who are mentioned by name; other employees are usually designated as “associates.” It is reasonable to suppose that the sharers of the Chamberlain’s Men drew up mutually binding contracts, specifying what was expected of them and probably prescribing penalties for failure to comply.
We have evidence of such contracts in other companies, though since the precise situations of the different companies varied, the contracts must have varied similarly. Some, for example, were heavily dominated by a manager/impresario, like Christopher Beeston with Queen Anne’s Men in the 1610s and Queen Henrietta’s Men in the 1630s; such men would have been in a position to impose something of their own will. This is obviously the case in respect of the one full player’s contract that has survived, that for Robert Dawes, who in 1614 contracted to play for Philip Henslowe and Jacob Meade with Lady Elizabeth’s Men at their new theatre/bear‐baiting house, the Hope:
7 April 1614
[Articles of Agreement,] made, concluded, and agreed upon, and which are to be kept and performed by Robert Dawes of London, gentleman, unto and with Philip Henslowe, esquire, and Jacob [Meade, waterman] in manner and form following, that is to say
Imprimis. The said Robert Dawes … doth covenant, promise, and grant to and with the said PH and JM … that he … shall and will play with such company as the said PH and JM shall appoint, for and during the space of three years from the date hereof and at the rate of one whole share, according to the custom of players; and that he … shall and will at all times during the said time duly attend all such rehearsal, which shall the night before the rehearsal be given publicly out; and if that he … shall at any time fail to come at the hour appointed, then he shall and will pay to the said PH and JM … 12d; and if he come not before the said rehearsal is ended, then the said Robert Dawes is contented to pay 2s; and further that if the said Robert Dawes shall not every day, whereon any play is or ought to be played, be ready appareled and … to begin the play at the hour of three of the clock in the afternoon, unless by six of the same company he shall be licensed to the contrary, that then he … shall and will pay to the said Philip and Jacob or their assigns 3s; and if that he … happen to be overcome with drink at the time when he [ought to] play, by the judgment of four of the said company, he shall and will pay 10s; and if he … shall [fail to come] during any play, having no licence or just excuse of sickness, he is contented to pay 20s; and further [he] … doth covenant and grant to and with the said PH and JM … that it shall and may be lawful unto and for the said PH and JM … during the term aforesaid, to receive and take back to their own proper use the part of him, the said Robert Dawes, of and in one moiety or half part of all such moneys as shall be received at the galleries and tiring house of such house or houses wherein he … shall play, for and in consideration of the use of the same house and houses; and likewise shall and may take and receive his other moiety [of] the moneys received at the galleries and tiring house dues, towards the paying to them, the said PH and JM, of the sum of £124, being the value of the stock of apparel furnished [to*] the said company by the said PH and JM of the one part of him … or any other sums [owed] to them for any apparel hereafter newly to be bought by the [said PH and JM, until the said PH and JM] shall thereby be fully satisfied, contended, and paid.
And further the said Robert Dawes doth covenant, [promise and grant to and with the said PH and JM, that if he …] shall at any time after the play is ended depart or go out of the [house] with any [of their] apparel on his body, of if the said Robert Dawes [shall carry away any property] belonging to the said company, or shall be consenting [or privy to any other of the said company going out of the house with any of the apparel on his or their bodies, he …] … shall and will forfeit and pay unto the said Philip and Jacob, or their administrators or assigns, the sum of £40 of lawful [money of England].2
The document clearly demonstrates the power that owners of authorized theatres had once the system that tentatively emerged in 1594 bedded in. Access to such a theatre became a prerequisite of London playing, and Henslowe over the years had clearly accumulated costumes, properties, and playbooks in his own name that he expected companies using his playhouses to lease from him. So Dawes’s contract is with Henslowe and Meade much more than it is with the company. James Burbage had no such leverage in 1594. But Shakespeare and his fellows probably had a contract which made each of them accountable to the company for precisely the same kind of things: attending rehearsals and performances in a timely fashion, and not being drunk when they were due to perform. Henslowe and Meade further spelled out that they had the right to make two deductions from the sharers’ take in the galleries and the tiring house (where the lords’ rooms would be situated: see p. 234), before the sharers saw that money: one to repay the £124 value of the costumes which Henslowe and Meade had supplied for the company, the other the house‐rent for use of the playhouse. James Burbage would similarly have expected a house‐rent for the use of the Theatre, though we do not know if this would have been based (as it was for Henslowe at both the Rose and the Hope) on a fixed proportion of the take from the highest‐paying customers, in the galleries and the lords’ rooms (see p. 63).
Fines for the earlier infringements are fairly stiff – but become a swingeing £40 for leaving the theatre with any of the costumes kept there for company use. Possibly this was inflated because Henslowe and Meade wanted to protect their own investment. But it is not unlikely that a company like the Chamberlain’s Men would have felt similarly protective about their costumes, which must have been their biggest single investment. (We shall see examples of what the Admiral’s Men paid out: p. 170ff.) A parallel example of contractual restrictions lies in the Articles of Agreement entered into by the sharers in a short‐lived boy company, the Children of the King’s Revels, circa 1608. The shareholders were those who bankrolled the operation, rather than the boy players, but here too it was stipulated that “no apparel, books, or other property of the company is to be removed without the consent of the sharers” (ES, 2: 65). And control of company clothing was one of many issues that caused friction between Martin Slater and his fellow sharers (see Box Item, “Martin Slater and the Children of the King’s Revels”).
Box 4.1 Martin Slater and the Children of the King’s Revels
The most active member of the Children of the King’s Revels operation was Martin Slater, a man whose track record gives an intriguing insight into the opportunities for illicit (or borderline illicit) money‐making in the theatre of the day. We first hear of Slater (or Slaughter), a citizen and ironmonger of London, as a sharer in the Admiral’s Men from 1594 to 1597. Henslowe noted his departure from the company on 18 July 1597 (Henslowe, 60). In December that year Slater claimed to have found a playbook which had been lost by his fellow sharer, Thomas Downton; Downton sued for its return in the court of the Queen’s Bench and was awarded £11 11s. in damages and costs (Eccles, 1993, 165–76). Five months later (May 18, 1598), Henslowe lent the Admiral’s Men £7 to buy five playbooks from Slater: the two parts of Hercules, Pythagoras, Phocasse (Focas), and Alexander and Lodowick (Henslowe, 89). Henslowe records paying another 20s. on July 18, 1598, when Slater finally delivered Alexander and Lodowick (93). This is highly suspicious. All of these plays had formerly been in the company’s repertory; besides which, £8 is far too little to pay for five new plays (which might easily cost £6 each). The implication must surely be that Slater walked off with these playbooks when he left the company. Possibly he made some limited claim to rights of possession; possibly the company just felt it was worth paying the money to get the playbooks back.
Slater then went to Scotland, in company with Lawrence Fletcher, who was to be one of the founder members of the King’s Men in 1603 (p. 279). Slater reappeared in England as payee for the Earl of Hertford’s Men when they played at court on Twelfth Night 1603 – an inexplicable, random appearance by a purely provincial troupe. By 1606, however, he had joined Queen Anne’s Men. By 1607 he was at odds with his fellows. Their leader, Thomas Greene, sued him in the court of Common Pleas to get him to stop posting playbills advertising plays by Queen Anne’s Men when in fact few, if any, of the sharers (other than perhaps Slater himself) were involved. It seems that he had been touring with a company made up of hired men, under the guise of the Queen’s Men, which of course might hurt the real company’s reputation.
Eventually Greene and the other sharers paid Slater £12 to desist from the practice, a bribe. For this he agreed that: “Although he be sworn one of her Majesty’s players yet in respect and consideration of the sum of £12 to him by them paid he, the said Martin Slater, shall forbear and be restrained from setting up bills for playing or playing as in the name of her Majesty’s service” (Bentley, 1984, 148n). The document later repeats that neither Slater nor any appointee of his will “set up or publish any plays or playbills … in the name of her Majesty’s players unless he the said Martin shall then have in his company to play with him five other of the said her Majesty’s servants” (ibid..) That they should need to resort to a bribe to restrain him suggests that it was a legal gray area whether a single sharer in the company could represent himself as playing in the name of the whole. Indeed, a copy of a 1606 warrant purporting to come from Queen Anne herself has survived, sanctioning Slater’s touring practices, though there is no way of determining its authenticity (ES, 2: 234–5). The terms of this agreement limited Slater to doing this only when a great majority of the other sharers were involved.
In 1608 Slater became manager of the Children of the King’s Revels, while still a member of Queen Anne’s Men. Again there was nothing to stop him doing this, though it would surely have kept him away from rehearsals and performances. The enterprise actually folded quickly, as a result of the plague. But Slater had it written in the Articles of Agreement that, if the boys had occasion to tour, “it shall be for more credit of the whole company that the said Martin shall travel with the children, and acquaint the magistrates with their business” (ES, 2: 65; Greenstreet, 1885). During any such travel his own allowance was to increase from a single share to a share and half. How this was to be compatible with being a sharer in Queen Anne’s Men is far from clear.
The issue of “acquaint[ing] the magistrates with their business” was obviously something that became a speciality for Slater. Despite his agreement with Greene and the others he joined his fellow, Thomas Swinnerton, in leading bogus “Queen’s Men” troupes on provincial tours. This doubtless lies behind yet another legal agreement Slater reached with the main company, recorded in a Chancery Bill of Complaint of February 9, 1609:
It is … agreed that all such apparel as is abroad shall be brought in … it is further … agreed … that if at any time hereafter any apparel, books, or any other goods or commodities shall be conveyed or taken away by any of the said parties without the consent and allowance of the said residue of his fellow sharers and the same exceeding the value of two shillings, that then he or they so offending shall forfeit and lose all … benefits … besides the loss of their places and all other interests which they may claim amongst us.
(Bentley, 1984, 51)
But this did not stop Slater and Swinnerton from leading their bogus tours, becoming quite notorious for it. In 1616 the Lord Chamberlain, the Earl of Pembroke, sent an emissary around the country, advising provincial officials to be on the lookout for players traveling under false warrants. And these men headed his list:
Whereas Thomas Swinnerton and Martin Slaughter, being two of the Queen’s Majesty’s company of players, having separated themselves from their said company, have each of them taken forth a several exemplification or duplicate of his Majesty’s letters patents granted to the whole company, and by virtue thereof they severally in two companies with vagabonds and such like idle persons, have and do use and exercise the quality of playing in divers places of this realm, to the great abuse and wrong of his Majesty’s subjects in general and contrary to the true intent and meaning of his Majesty to the said company … These are therefore to pray, and nevertheless in his Majesty’s name to will and require you, upon notice given of any of the said persons … that you call the said parties’ offenders before you and thereupon take their said several exemplifications or duplicates or other warrants by which they use their said quality from them. And forthwith to send the same to me.
(Gurr, 1996, 49–5)
Swinnerton was actually caught under this by the Norwich authorities, but overall it was of limited effect and Pembroke reissued the notice in 1624. In the meantime Slater pursued his chosen course. He turned up for Queen Anne’s funeral in due order in May 1619 and as a Groom of her Chamber was presented with black mourning‐cloth (ES, 2: 236). Yet thereafter he can be traced traveling with a warrant in Queen Elizabeth’s name (presumably the former Princess Elizabeth, now Queen of Bohemia), and in 1625 in the name of the King’s Men (Gurr, 43).
Slater’s record shows well enough that everything was not sweetness and light in the theatrical profession. The Chamberlain’s Men were very lucky, so far as we can tell, never to have contracted with anyone as indifferent to the company’s wellbeing, so shameless in his dealings with his fellows, and so determined to seek his own advantage as he saw fit, as Slater was. It is worth noting, however, that Slater – a man of considerable theatrical experience – presumably reckoned that there was more profit to be made from touring than from taking his place alongside his fellows in the Red Bull theatre. That may be, of course, because he was able to set his own terms about the proportion of the take he would retain for himself – and he did not have to worry about interference from his supposed fellows.
We do not know how the Chamberlain’s Men initially acquired their stock of costumes. Possibly the former members of Strange’s Men had been able to salvage some from that enterprise. Possibly they were able to acquire some from other companies that had folded during the plague. Or possibly James Burbage had built up a store of them at the Theatre, which the company might have leased or bought; or they simply had to buy them on the general market. Either way, the sharers would pay – upfront in purchasing their share, or over time in deductions from the household take.
Box 4.2 The Contracts of William Shakespeare and John Heminge
Robert Dawes was contracted simply as a player, as most sharers would be (see p. 140). But what of Shakespeare? It is clear that he was writing plays for the Chamberlain’s Men from the off, generally two a year, one comedy and one more serious piece, history or tragedy. He was thus what was known as their “ordinary poet,” continuing a tradition we noted with the Queen’s Men, where both Wilson and Tarlton among the sharers at least occasionally wrote for the company. Not all companies had such personnel among them. The Admiral’s Men, for example, had no “ordinary poet” in the 1590s and bought all their plays on commission from the stable of playwrights – including Dekker, Chettle, Haughton, Drayton, Chapman, Porter, Munday, Jonson, Hathaway, and Day – whose business relations with the company are chronicled by Henslowe.
Indeed, the only true parallels with Shakespeare are Thomas Heywood with Queen Anne’s Men and Nathan Field, who as an adult was with Lady Elizabeth’s Men and briefly, in Shakespeare’s wake, the King’s Men (see Figure 6.2). Both were actor‐sharers who also wrote plays. The parallel with Field is actually not all that strong. He was indeed a star player, having trained up with the boy company at the Blackfriars, so cannot have had much time for writing plays; only two plays by him are extant, though attempts have been made to find his partial hand in others. But Heywood is a very close parallel. After writing plays for the Admiral’s Men that can be traced in Henslowe’s Diary, he joined what became Queen Anne’s Men when they were still patronized by the Earl of Worcester and remained with them until the Queen’s death in 1619, turning out a steady and often very popular stream of plays. In his Epistle to The English Traveller (1633) he talked of “two hundred and twenty [plays], in which I have had either an entire hand or at least a main finger” – much more productive than Shakespeare, though over a longer period. It works out at about six plays a year over thirty‐seven years, compared with Shakespeare’s thirty‐eight over, at most, twenty‐five years.
It is a question why a playing company would choose to include men like these as sharers, at the heart of their operations. In later years the King’s Men would maintain an unbroken chain of “ordinary poets”: John Fletcher (briefly in tandem with Field), Philip Massinger, and James Shirley. But this was on a different footing; they were on a retained contract to write exclusively for the company, and presumably a fixed number of plays were expected. But they were never either actors or, to our knowledge, sharers. It seems likely that retaining “ordinary poets” was related to the phenomenon we noticed with Strange’s Men, when The Tanner of Denmark was played once and apparently never again (p. 64). Such failures were simply bad business. Those who achieved positions as “ordinary poets” already had track records of writing plays that could be revived again and again and draw audiences: money in the bank. One thing that may have made Shakespeare attractive to his fellow sharers is that he not only had a track record of successful writing (a commodity in short supply, given the recent deaths of Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Kyd, and Robert Greene) but he seems to have been able to bring the rights to some of his plays with him. The Henry VI plays and Richard III all apparently carried over into his new company’s repertoire, as did Titus Andronicus (see p. XXX).
Of course, neither Shakespeare nor any of the others wrote anything like all the plays their companies performed. Henslowe’s Diary shows that, in their first (1594–95) season at the Rose with him, the revived Admiral‘s Men put on a total of thirty‐eight plays, of which twenty‐one were new; the next year they staged thirty‐seven, including nineteen new ones, and in 1596–97, thirty‐four, of which fourteen were new, which set the average for the next few years. Two or three new ones from an “ordinary poet” (had they had one) would only have been a small proportion of the total. But there was a better than average chance that these would be among their regular earners for years to come. Indeed, over the years, the King’s Men acquired such a back‐catalogue of popular works from Shakespeare and Fletcher in particular (and a few other irregulars, like Jonson) that they commissioned fewer and fewer new plays through the 1620s and 30s. Well‐chosen “ordinary poets” certainly proved a good investment for that company.
What, however, might this have meant for Shakespeare’s contract with the company? The short answer is that we do not know, though we may catch some of its flavor from the one contract of an “ordinary poet” of which we have detailed information, that between Richard Brome and Queen Henrietta’s Men, playing at the Salisbury Court theatre in the late 1630s. As so often, we only know of this from legal wranglings which began when the company sued Brome for breach of contract:
Richard Brome … well knowing that it would be very beneficial for him … to write and compose plays for the actors and owners of the said house, did by himself and others whom he employed therein make means unto … the then owners and actors in the said house to entertain them in that business. And after many parleys and treaties therein, it was at the last by articles of agreement indented bearing date on or about the twentieth day of July … 1635 agreed … that he, the said Brome, should for the term of three years the next ensuing with his best art and industry write every year three plays and deliver them to the company of players there acting for the time being. And that the said Richard Brome should not nor would write any play or any part of a play to any other players or playhouse but apply all his study and endeavours therein for the benefit of the said company of the said playhouse. And that the said covenantees [i.e. the owners and players] should pay unto the said Richard Brome the sum of 15s per week during the said term of three years and permit the said Brome to have the benefit of one day’s profit of playing such new play as he should make … the ordinary charges of the house only deducted.3
It all ended in tears. Brome received his weekly wage, which (given the inflation of the early years of the century) was not luxurious, but doubtless more comfortable than payment by results. And he would have the bonus of profits from an early performance – perhaps the second or third, a usual arrangement with other dramatists. But Brome did not deliver the stipulated three plays a year. He claimed that “howsoever they had desired to have three plays yearly for three years … to be undertaken and promised by this defendant, yet upon trust and confidence and by the true and fair intent and plain meaning of all parties, the plaintiffs neither should nor would exact nor expect from this defendant the performance or composition of any more plays than … this defendant could or should be able well to do or perform” (661). More guidelines than stipulations, he claimed. The plague intervened and they came to an impasse. In 1638 the parties attempted to retrieve the situation with a new contract, this time for seven years. Brome was to get 20s. a week, still to write three plays a year, and moreover also to make up the arrears then (in the company’s view) owing. In response Brome blustered a good deal, claiming that one of the plays he had delivered “styled and called The Sparagus Garden, was worth to them … the sum of £1000 and upwards,” also that he had been ill. By this time, he argued “he is only behind with them [the Salisbury Court company] two plays, in lieu of which he hath made divers scenes in old, revived plays for them and many prologues and epilogues to such plays of theirs, songs and one introduction at their first playing of the plague” (664). Such duties were apparently not contractually specified and Brome claimed that they represented equal time and effort to the two plays he owed.
Little of this can have applied to Shakespeare as a sharer. It looks as though he was expected normally to produce two new plays a year rather than three. It is more likely that he received payment like other sharers directly from the performance profits, rather than a weekly wage – but some remission from duties that other sharers would be expected to carry. It is possible, though, that he did also receive the exclusive profits (after deduction of regular expenses) from an early performance of a new play. It is also entirely likely that he patched old plays, and wrote prologues and epilogues as needed – especially when plays were performed at court. They were regarded as ephemera and often not reproduced in printed texts (Stern, 2009a, 81–119).4 It is easy also to invent other business he could have seen to. There was no such figure as a director in Elizabethan theatre and it is tempting to assume that, Peter Quince‐like, he might have steered his fellow mechanicals through the basics of a first performance. And might he have had a hand in finding playwrights to commission to write plays other than his own that the company would need?
The problem is that there are, in fact, too many functions that we might suppose Shakespeare’s contract specified, given that he had to find clear time to write his plays, and that he certainly did act. It might have been a piety that Shakespeare should have been at the head of the list of “Names of the Principal Actors in all these plays” included in the First Folio of his plays in 1623. But, as we have noted, his name also appears quite prominently in the lists of players which Ben Jonson attached to plays in his Works (1616). Shakespeare is credited with roles in Every Man In His Humour(1598) and Sejanus (1603), though not in other Jonson plays that his company first staged. This is sometimes read as evidence that Shakespeare did not act after 1603, but the evidence from Jonson is not as categorical as that. Note that Every Man Out of His Humour fell between two plays in which he did act. And the comparison with Robert Armin is instructive. He would probably only have been with the company for Sejanus, Volpone, The Alchemist, and Catiline, but we think of him as the comic mainstay of the company after Will Kemp left. Yet the only Jonson list in which Armin appears is The Alchemist. It seems probable that Jonson only listed those in major roles, and that Armin may often have spread his comic talent around several smaller ones. Shakespeare may similarly have taken smaller roles after Sejanus – a change when they became the King’s Men. But surely even his initial contract must have allowed him some remission from acting and other duties involved in the staging of plays, to give him the time to write.
It does seem to have been the case (eventually if not in the first instance), that there could be sharers who did not act. There is, for example, no concrete evidence of John Heminge performing after he appeared in the cast list for Jonson’s Catiline (1611). He is not credited with any role in John Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi, published in 1623 with a list of actors in the first production, circa 1613/14 and another circa 1621/22 (see p. 183, 187). Yet from 1601 onwards Heminge was normally entrusted on his own to receive payments from the court on behalf of his fellows, and he continued to appear in every official list of company sharers until 1629. As the company flourished in London, and its relationship with the playhouses in which it performed changed, the volume of its official business doubtless increased: relations with the court and local authorities, negotiations with the Master of the Revels, contracts, building maintenance, payment of wages and bills. Moreover, he took a leading role in bringing boy actors into the company, apprenticing far more than any of his fellows; these included Thomas Belte, Alexander Cook, George Birch, John Wilson, Richard Sharp, Thomas Holcomb, Robert Pallant (the younger), and William Trigg. Heminge presumably proved capable and trustworthy and his fellow sharers allowed him to take on the role of a business manager; contracts must have been sufficiently flexible to allow that. Around the time the King’s Men acquired use of the Blackfriars (p. 286) he took on a deputy, John Jackson. He obtained for himself the position of tapster at the Globe, selling the beer on‐site, and had outside interests, such as being one of the ten measurers of sea‐coal for London (ES, 2: 370–3; Gurr, 2004a, 230).
For most other companies the theatre‐owners apparently took on the role of business entrepreneurs, while the actors stuck to acting and the immediate business of staging plays. Philip Henslowe, for example, was only the company financier and landlord when the Admiral’s Men first moved into the Rose in 1594; but around 1597/8 their relationship changed and he seems to have run more of their business affairs, in conjunction with his son‐in‐law, Alleyn.
Although the roles of sharers in the Chamberlain’s Men might evolve for the good of the company, in ways I have suggested for Heminge and possibly Shakespeare, in the early days the shares themselves did not pass out of the company. If one of the sharers left, as Will Kemp left around 1599, the expectation was that he would be repaid for his share at the current rate; by the same token, if one died, it was expected that his executors would receive the money. New sharers could only be introduced if they all consented. This meant that the value of shares and the income they generated would fluctuate as numbers did. This was also inevitable, given the ups and downs of playing conditions; but to the extent that the body regulated itself, they were masters of their own fates.
That corporate interdependence began to break down after Shakespeare retired from the business, as some widows tried to hold on to shares and more of the players also became sharers in the playhouses (“householders”) as well as the company. Indeed a legal tussle broke out as early as 1615, between John Heminge and his daughter, Thomasine, over the householder shares of her late husband, William Ostler (p. 164). We do not know the outcome of the suit, though it looks as though Heminge managed to hold on to the shares – by the time of his death in 1630 he owned a quarter of the shares in both the Globe and the Blackfriars, an extremely lucrative investment that he bequeathed to his son, William. It was resented by members of the company who were excluded from the householder shares (Gurr, 2004a, 271–80). In Shakespeare’s own time, however, his company seem to have worked loyally together – especially by the standards of the day – and with remarkably little known friction.
Box 4.3 Augustine Phillips: Shakespeare’s Fellow‐Sharer
It will not be practicable, or probably profitable, to traces the lives and careers of all Shakespeare’s fellows. Burbage as his principal tragedian, and Kemp and Armin as his two principal comedians, will certainly require further comment in due course. But it may offer some general insights to trace the life of one of them, if only to show that they were not all like Martin Slater. As it happens Augustine Phillips is better documented than most of them (EPF, 191–203).
Nothing is known, however, of Phillips’s early life and origins. The earliest secure reference to him is as one of the members of Strange’s Men given a special Privy Council licence of May 1593 to travel during the plague (p. 67). The subsidy commissioners regarded Phillips as living in the Liberty of the Clink that year, part of the parish of St Saviour’s in Southwark, on the south bank of the Thames and just to the west of London Bridge – Henslowe territory. This is confirmed by the parish’s communion token book for the winter of 1593/4, which notes him as living at the end of Horseshoe Court, near Bullhead Alley in the Liberty. The commissioners assessed his wealth as £3 and levied a tax on him of 8 shillings; the token book establishes that he was regularly (at least once a month) taking Holy Communion at St Saviour’s, as required by law; and also that there were three adults in the property, probably Phillips, his wife, Anne, and a servant. The Liberty of Clink, an area notorious for its brothels, was still notionally under the authority of the Bishop of Winchester (on liberties, see pp. 64; 197 and Note 4). But it was free from city control, which is why Henslowe built the Rose there in 1587, and Phillips would have found it convenient to live nearby while he was with Strange’s Men.
St Saviour’s parish register tells us that Phillips’s first daughter, Magdalen, was christened on September 29, 1594; his second, Rebecca, was christened there on July 11, 1596. In the first entry he is mentioned as “Austin, histrionis [player]” and the second as “Augustine, player of interludes.”5For some reason his third daughter, Anne, was christened in 1599 at Stephen’s Church in Coleman Street, near the city Guildhall. Besides these daughters, who all survived him, Augustine and Anne had a still‐born daughter who was buried at the church of St Botolph’s without Aldgate (in east London) on September 7, 1597. They paid 3s. for the service; the digging of the grave, ringing of the bell, and a coffin cost a further 18d. Anne Phillips was churched there, receiving the traditional blessing for recovery from childbirth a month later, on October 5. The Phillips’s only son, “Austin,” was christened on November 29, 1601, back in Southwark; his burial is recorded on July 1, 1604.
As these records show, the family had been moving about. They were still resident in Horseshoe Court in 1595/6 but not by the following year. Southwark was as inconvenient for the Theatre – north‐east of the city, where the Chamberlain’s Men normally played – as it was convenient for the Rose. Living in St Botolph’s must have made life much easier. Once the company moved to the Globe, however it made sense to return to Southwark. They were certainly there for the birth of Austin and back specifically in Horseshoe Alley by 1602/3, when the number of adults in the house was listed as six. Evidence of Phillips’s membership of the Chamberlain’s Men accumulates. He is listed in the “plot” of The Second Part of the Seven Deadly Sins(circa 1597) as playing the role of Sardanapalus (see pp. 205–6). And he is in the acting lists for Jonson’s first three plays with the company, Every Man In His Humour, Every Man Out of His Humour, and Sejanus – but he would be dead by Volpone(1606).
In late 1598 Phillips became one of the original shareholders in the Globe, replacing the Theatre (see p. 224). This was in effect a syndicate, initially comprising Shakespeare, Phillips, Pope, Heminge, Kemp, and the Burbage brothers, a kind of inner membership of the playing company. It took on the additional responsibility (and, of course, the profits) of financing the theatre they would use. The kind of role played elsewhere by Philip Henslowe, Edward Alleyn, and Christopher Beeston – playhouse owners who effectively dictated terms to the players who used them – in the Chamberlain’s Men was played collectively by senior members of their own company.
Probably the most stressful event of Phillips’s life was his examination after the special performance of a play of Richard II (probably Shakespeare’s), on the eve of the Essex Rebellion, when the disgraced Earl staged an abortive coup, supposedly against the Queen’s evil councilors (see p. 135). Exactly why he should have been singled out for this is not clear; there is no record that anyone else was. But he kept a very cool head about him when he was examined by Chief Justice Popham (a bully of a man) and Justice Fenner:
The examination of Augustine Phillips, servant unto the Lord Chamberlain and one of his players, taken the 18th of February 1601, upon his oath.
He saith that Friday last was sennight [i.e. Friday of the previous week] or Thursday Sir Charles Percy, Sir Jocelyn Percy, and the Lord Mounteagle, with some three more, spoke to some of the players in the presence of this examinate, to have the play of the deposing and killing of King Richard the Second to be played the Saturday next, promising to get them more than their ordinary to play it. Where this examinate and his fellows were determined to have played some other play, holding that the play of King Richard to be so old and so long out of use that they should have small or no company at it. But at their request, this examinate and his fellows were content to play it the Saturday and had their 40s more than their ordinary for it, and so played it accordingly.
Augustine Phillips (EPT, 197)
No one seems to have thought that the performance was meant to incite an uprising there and then. Essex himself was not even there. Francis Bacon, who later prosecuted many of his followers, argued that Essex’s steward, Gelly Meyrick, wanted the play “so earnest he was to satisfy his eyes with the sight of that tragedy which he thought soon after his lord should bring from the stage to the state” (Chambers, 1930, 2: 326). The motivation was more psychological than incendiary, to put people in the right mindset.
It looks as though the authorities were more interested in establishing the intentions of the plotters than in the involvement of the players, but Phillips may not have known that. His examination affirmed that some of Essex’s supporters had approached members of the company on Friday 6 or Thursday 5 February, with the proposal to put on the play. The players had resisted the idea, claiming that it was an old play with little appeal (though its text had in fact gone through three editions in 1597/8, making it – only three years earlier – one of Shakespeare’s most popular works, at least in print). They had only agreed to stage it when offered £2 over and above their regular take; they duly performed it on February 7, a Saturday, the day before the failed coup. As Phillips told it this was a rather grudging business arrangement for the players, not a flirting with treason. And the authorities apparently took them at his word. The company played at court on February 24, the night before Essex’s execution.
On May 17, 1603, Phillips and his fellows received a patent from King James, making them now the King’s Men. In March 1604 James made a ceremonial entrance into the City of London, and Phillips was one of the players authorized to receive four and a‐half yards of red cloth for their livery at the event (see p. 281). On November 2, 1604 Phillips lent one John Baumfeld, of Hardington in Somerset, the sum of £100 for six months at the maximum legal annual interest rate of 10 percent; the following May Baumfeld would owe him £105. It is a measure of the success of the company (or more particularly, we might hazard a guess, of the housekeepers who controlled the playhouse) that Phillips had that much ready money that he could afford to loan out. He also had enough to purchase a property in Mortlake, Surrey, some way removed from the city but accessible by river. That winter of 1603/4 the plague still gripped the city and in December the court removed for a time to Wilton in Wiltshire, the country estate of the Earl of Pembroke. The King’s Men were summoned to appear there, and the Chamber Accounts record that John Heminge was paid £30 “for the pains and expenses of himself and the rest of the company in coming from Mortlake in the county of Surrey” (ES, 4: 168). There is a good chance that they were quartered in or near Phillips’s property.
By the late winter of 1604/5 the Phillips family had moved out of Horseshoe Court, possibly removing altogether to Mortlake. Augustine may already have been ailing, since he made his will on May 4,1605 and his widow was confirmed as his executrix on May 13. The will itself reveals the depths of his associations with the theatre. (He was in fact the stepbrother of the former fellow‐sharer, Thomas Pope, who predeceased him.) He made a bequest of £10 “to my sister, Elizabeth Gough”; she was married to an actor with the King’s Men (though probably not a sharer) Robert Gough, who was a witness to the will. He left similar bequests to two sons of another sister, Margery Borne, who had very possibly been married to William Bird or Borne, a player with the Admiral’s Men. He left £5 to be distributed equally among all the hired men of the King’s Men. Then more specific bequests of “a 30s piece in gold” each to early members of the company, Shakespeare, Henry Condell, and “my servant Christopher Beeston,” which suggests that Beeston might once have been his apprentice. To more recent fellows in the company, Lawrence Fletcher, Robert Armin, Richard Cowley, Alexander Cooke, and Nicholas Tooley, he left each 20s. in gold. He left two apprentices 40s. each and some more personal items, including musical instruments (see p. 176).
A slightly unusual feature of the will is that Phillips makes no bequests as such to some of his oldest fellows, Heminge, Burbage, and William Sly. It does, however, name them as executors of the will, if “Anne my wife do at any time marry after my decease” and before the business of the will was concluded. (She was also to be excluded from any inheritance under the will.) In that case, “for their pains herein to be taken, a bowl of silver of the value of £5 apiece.” Presumably Phillips knew something about “my loving wife” that he was not letting on, since Anne Phillips did hastily marry one John Witter; the will went back to probate in 1607 and Heminge was declared executor, to be assisted by Burbage and Sly. This was not quite the last to be heard of the affair. After Anne died in 1618, Witter made a rather feeble attempt to sue Heminge and Condell over her inheritance, which (though not specified in the will) he claimed had included Augustine’s share in the Globe. The court found against him and awarded the veteran players costs.
In so many issues relating to Elizabethan players, we are at the mercy of what happens to survive. Legal documents tend to predominate, followed by financial ones; places of residence are recorded because they relate to taxation. In the case of Augustine Phillips we can trace his movements as as player, from one company and playhouse to another. We find evidence that he found the theatrical business profitable and also one in which he bonded closely with his fellows, including the apprentices he was training up. The Essex affair is the one great anomaly in the record, doubtless a moment of great drama and tension. The births and deaths of children tell one tale of marital relations, the will a rather sad finale. This is a long way from the whole tale of a life, but it is more than we can usually expect for a man of such status.