Everyone else who worked in the theatre, other than the sharers, was a paid associate. The great majority of the income from performances was divided, one way or another, between the theatre owners and the sharers who rented the theatres from them. But it fell to the sharers (i.e. the actors rather than the housekeepers) to pay the associates from their profits. (On the term “housekeepers” for part‐owners of certain playhouses, see p. 224.) When some of the sharers in the King’s Men in the 1630s sued to be allowed to become housekeepers by acquiring shares in the Globe and the Blackfriars, they pointed out the inequity of their situation – since the shares of the housekeepers were evidently far more profitable than those of mere players: “their shares fall shorter and are a great deal less than the housekeepers,” they complained. “And yet notwithstanding out of those lesser shares the said actors defray all charges of the house whatsoever (viz.) wages to hired men and boys, music, lights etc., amounting to 900 or £1000 per annum or thereabouts, being £3 a day, one day with another, besides the extraordinary charge the said actors are wholly at for apparel and poets etc” (Gurr, 2004, 274). These, of course, were 1630s prices. And during Shakespeare’s time these tensions between sharers and housekeepers were far less marked. Nevertheless the costs associated with hired men were not inconsiderable, even then.
It was a very different operation from that of the adult companies, but the arrangement for the Children of the King’s Revels gives us a better idea of where the hired men figured in the economics of the theatre and who they were. One sixth of each day’s take was to be set aside to cover “charges of the house,” which included “the gatherers, the wages, the children’s board, music, book‐keeper, tireman, tirewoman, lights, the Master of the Revels’s duties [i.e. fees], and all other things needful and necessary” (ES, 2: 65). The main differences for an adult company would be that this obviously makes no provision for paying any actors at all, sharers or hired men. But it does include a provision for lighting, which would be a major cost for a boys company playing indoors, though not for adults in the Theatre or Rose who relied almost exclusively on sunlight.6 And board for the much smaller number of boy apprentices whom the adult players employed would not be handled in this way (see p. 182ff). Otherwise it seems a realistic checklist, and it is perhaps surprising that an old hand like Martin Slater felt it could all be done for one sixth of the weekly take (which was also to be his own share – with an extra half‐share whenever the boys were taken on tour).
I examine below each of the categories of hired personnel identified in the King’s Revels list, together with the category of hired (adult) actors which that list naturally omits. In Chapter 8, where I look at the Blackfriars playhouse, we have very detailed information about the (male) personnel employed by the King’s Men in 1624 (p. 301ff).7 From that I deduce that the total number they employed circa 1608, before they took over the Blackfriars – exclusive of women and minors – would have been in the region of sixteen, all of whom needed paying from the daily take.