In an analysis of seven cast lists for the King’s Men printed with plays between 1626 and 1632, G. E. Bentley conclude that “the numbers of hired men assigned roles are four, three, four or five, one, one, three and one” (1984, 69). Another way of putting this is to say that they might expect to cast about as many hired men with speaking roles (sometimes dubbed “journeymen players”) as they did boy players, rarely more than three or four. In the first days of the Chamberlain’s Men we can, as I have shown, fairly confidently identify seven sharers (see p. 140). Besides them, the following are also known to have played with the company early: Henry Condell, William Sly, Christopher Beeston, and John Duke. Of these Condell and Beeston had certainly been apprentices and perhaps became hired men when their indentures ended. Condell became a sharer quite quickly, possibly (following an advantageous marriage) buying the slot vacated by George Bryan, who apparently left circa 1597 to take up a position at court as an ordinary Groom of the Chamber. And Will Sly too became a sharer; Augustine Phillips’s will (1605) treats him as a fellow, alongside Heminge and Burbage. Thomas Pope is not named in the 1603 personnel of the King’s Men (he would die by early 1604), so that too may have opened up a slot.
The remuneration for being a hired man varied quite considerably from contract to contract, and there are numerous complaints about being paid late if at all: several depositions in the 1623 Worth v. Baskervile case attest to hired men getting less than they had been promised, when audiences were thin (see p. 158, 165). John King, for example, claimed to have been “a hired servant” with the Red Bull company for “30 years past and upwards,” which is notable in itself – these were by no means necessarily transitory positions. King claimed that “if at any time it should happen the getting of the said company to be but small and to decrease that then he should not have his whole wages agreed to be paid unto him but to have his part of the loss thereof as well as the said company and to have a part proportionally only to their gettings” (Bentley, 1984, 110). King was deferentially ignoring the reality that he could never earn more than his agreed wage, whereas the “company” (i.e. the sharers – or perhaps their manager) would always do well out of large attendances.
But on the face of it hired men could do quite well. Edward Alleyn, for example, signed a contract with William Kendall in 1597, committing “to give him for his said service every week of his playing in London 10 shillings and in the country 5 shillings; for the which he covenanteth for the space of … 2 years to be ready at all times to play in the house of the said Philip [Henslowe] and in no other during the said term.”8 Ten shillings a week is a princely £26 a year, in a context where we are regarding £10 as a comfortable wage; this assumes payment did not cease in Lent when, for the most part, playing was supposed to be suspended. Even the half pay in the country is not draconian; the company probably handled room and board centrally while they were on tour. Other contracts for the Admiral’s Men were somewhat less generous. That same year three of the sharers hired Thomas Hearne “for 2 years in the quality of playing for five shillings a week for one year and 6 shillings 8 pence for the other year.” And in 1599 a blank contract in the name of the sharer, Thomas Downton, specified payment of “8 shillings a week as long as they play and after they lie still one fortnight then to give him half wages” (Henslowe, 238–9; 45). Presumably lying still would most often be the result of the plague, so that even half wages (when the company would not be earning) had its attractions. In each case there was a “covenant,” formally making the hired man a servant of the person issuing the contract for two years, giving some security on both sides.
What we can see of the business affairs of the Chamberlain’s Men suggests that people once hired tended to remain with the company, perhaps in the hope of becoming a sharer. That does seem, however, to have largely been a case of waiting for dead men’s shoes. The existing sharers would have hesitated to expand the pool, since that would diminish their own returns. This may be why Beeston and Duke left, when opportunities opened up elsewhere; by 1602 they are with the newly‐formed Earl of Worcester’s Men, playing at the Boar’s Head, and very probably sharers in it. But those who hung on generally seemed to achieve promotion to the inner circle eventually. John Lowin is one of the most impressive examples. He appears in Henslowe’s Diary as a member – possibly a sharer – of Worcester’s Men, playing at the Rose in 1602–3; he authorized a number of payments for them. But he evidently transferred to the newly‐created King’s Men shortly thereafter. He performed in Sejanus (1603) and The Malcontent (1604) but was not in official lists of the King’s Men in either year, and so was presumably still a hired man with them; nevertheless, in the Induction to The Malcontent, in which three members of the King’s Men played “themselves”, Lowin was one of the three, status not necessarily correlating with audience familiarity. Thereafter Lowin seems quite prominently placed in the cast‐lists for Volpone, The Alchemist, and Catiline, played Bosola in The Duchess of Malfi, and is clearly a sharer by the next official list in 1619, if not long before. In later years he is recorded as playing several prominent roles with success, including Falstaff, Volpone, and Epicure Mammon in The Alchemist (he was evidently on the portly side) and eventually succeeded Heminge in 1630 as a co‐manager of the company.
Three others to whom Augustine Phillips made bequests very probably rose in the ranks. Richard Cowley, whose indeterminate early status we noted above (see p. 141). Alexander Cooke, who started as a boy apprentice, was with the company until his death in 1613, when his will declared that he owned £50, “which is in the hand of my fellows, as my share of the stock.” Nicholas Tooley was not in the 1603 patent of the King’s Men but was in that of 1619; he died while lodging with “my good friend Mr. Cuthbert Burbage” in 1623.