The King’s Revels agreement, lastly, called for a book‐keeper to be paid among the hired men, to which I add another position we know of among the adult companies, that of stage‐keeper. The positions are famously paired in the Induction to Jonson’s Bartholomew Fair, where the stage‐keeper regales the audience with tales of how much better it was “in Master Tarlton’s time, I thank my stars” (2012b, line 28), and the book‐keeper appears “not for want of a prologue but by way of a new one” (44–5) to introduce a Scrivener, who will read Articles of Agreement supposedly binding the audience and the author of the play. It is not impossible that the actual book‐keeper and stage‐keeper of Lady Elizabeth’s Men at the Hope playhouse played themselves in this sequence. Evidently the jobs they performed were familiar to the audience.
The book‐keeper’s (sometimes called book‐holder’s) role, minimally, seems to have been to act as prompter during a performance, helping actors who were “out”; to track entrances and exits; and to ensure that properties were where they should be when needed. Benvolio in Romeo and Julietspeaks of a “without‐book prologue, faintly spoke / After the prompter” (1.4.7–8: Q1 only) – a nonce‐prologue which is not part of “the book,” being spoken softly to the running prompts of the book‐keeper. In Every Woman In Her Humour we hear of someone who “would … stamp and stare (God bless us), like a playhouse book‐keeper when the actors miss their entrance” (1609, B3). In a joke at his own expense, Jonson has one of the children in the Praeludium to Cynthia’s Revels deny that they have the author “in the tiring‐house to prompt us aloud, stamp at the book‐holder, swear for our properties, curse the poor tire‐man, rail the music out of tune” (Jonson 2012c, lines 128–30). The book‐holder thus merged aspects of the modern roles of prompter and stage manager.
The precise function of the surviving “plots” or “plats” among the Henslowe–Alleyn papers (and others which may have originated there) has been much debated but were probably, at least in part, a “map” to help the book‐keeper in his duty of keeping a performance on the rails (see p. 113). It is a common but unsubstantiated assumption that it was also part of the book‐holder’s responsibility to tidy up the company’s playbooks and mark them up for production purposes, in the way we might expect of a modern prompt‐copy. As William B. Long has demonstrated, the surviving eighteen playbooks of the period, manuscripts demonstrably used within the theatres, simply do not bear this out (1985; 1999). The book‐holder’s interventions are fewer than we might expect, and mainly aimed (it would seem) at making details more readily noticeable on the page, rather than regularizing the playwrights’ stage‐directions or specifying numbers of attendants and other minor roles (as editors of plays have often supposed). Such functions are much more apparent in the surviving “plots,” but we do not know who was responsible for those. G. E. Bentley makes the logical point that “The prompter would have been the obvious man to make, or at least to supervise the making of such Plots,” though when a play came from a company’s “ordinary poet” he could just as readily have done the job (1984, 85). The book‐holder had an important role in the company, but it was as a servant to a team of professionals, not in any directorial capacity.
It is possible that the distinct position of book‐holder developed over time, once regular playing in the London playhouses was established. The earliest book‐holder to whom we can put a name is recalled by John Taylor, the Water‐Poet: “I myself did know one Thomas Vincent that was a book‐keeper or prompter at the Globe playhouse near the Bank‐end in Maid Lane” (1638, 66). He was referring to a time pre‐1612. But that is all we securely know of Vincent (see p. 209). By the time Edward Knight held the position with the King’s Men it carried some responsibility. He was the first of those named in the Sir Henry Herbert’s 1624 Protection List of the company’s “servants” (Herbert 158; see p. 301). In the 1630s he was on the fringes of one theatrical awkwardness and at the heart of another. In October 1632 Sir Henry recorded “Received of Knight, for allowing of Ben Jonson’s play called Humours Reconciled, or The Magnetic Lady, to be acted … £2” (176). He did not normally keep a record of who delivered his licensing fee, but in this case he mentions Knight by name. Was this prudential on his part? A year later this play had both Herbert and Jonson in trouble with the Court of High Commission over some lines delivered in performance which caused offence, probably relating to Archbishop Laud’s reforms of the church (Butler, 1992; Dutton, 2000, 42–3). Herbert and Jonson insisted that the lines were not in the “allowed” text, the actors that they were. In the end the Court found against the players (184). No one would actually have been better placed to know if unlicensed additions had been made to a text than the book‐keeper.
A year later Knight was centrally involved. On October 19, 1633 Herbert most unusually gave a last‐minute order to the King’s Men not to stage a revival of Fletcher’s The Tamer Tamed (or, The Woman’s Prize) “upon complaints of foul and offensive matters contained therein” (see p. 90, 112). “On Saturday morning following the book was brought me and … I returned it to the players the Monday morning after, purged of oaths, profaneness, and ribaldry” (182). In 1606 Parliament had passed an Act of Abuses, aimed at restricting the use of profane oaths in the theatres; it was mainly focused on preventing the naming of God and the Trinity. In the intense church politics of the 1630s Herbert became particularly sensitive to this issue and insisted on reviewing plays formerly allowed by his predecessors but possibly not meeting the standards he now required.15 From 1606 onwards the company’s book‐holder would have been particularly well‐placed to ensure that the “allowed” copy of their plays met the legal requirements, overseeing necessary revisions when an earlier play was revived.16
That was now more important than ever, as Sir Henry’s message to Edward Knight spelled out:
Mr. Knight,
In many things you have saved me labour; yet where your judgment or pen failed you, I have made bold to use mine. Purge their parts, as I have the book. And I hope every hearer and players will think I have done God good service, and the quality no wrong;17who hath no greater enemies than oaths, profaneness, and public ribaldry, which for the future I do absolutely forbid to be presented unto me in any playbook, as you will answer it at your peril. 21 October 1633.
This was subscribed to their play of The Tamer Tamed, and directed to Knight, their book‐keeper
(Herbert, 183).
Knight thus found himself in the delicate position of messenger to the players and their playwrights in this sensitive matter. He had to make sure that both the “allowed book” and the players’ “parts” were in line with Herbert’s directions (on “parts,” see p. 108).
On a more relaxed note, however, his role became the butt of repeated metatheatrical in‐jokes. In the Fletcher and Rowley comedy, The Maid in the Mill (performed 1623), as the plot gets more complicated, the clown Bustofa, played by William Rowley himself, reflects “they are out of their parts, sure. / It may be ’tis the book‐holder’s fault. I’ll go see” (1647, p. 8). Similarly, in Richard Brome’s Antipodes, when a voice “within” orders “Dismiss the court,” Lord Leroy says “Dismiss the court: can you not hear the prompter?” (2010a, 3.8.628–30). It has been argued, from experience at “Shakespeare’s Globe,” that the role of prompter was unworkable on the Elizabethan stage. But there are enough references in the texts from Romeo and Juliet (Q1) onwards to prove that there was such a figure, and that he doubled up as the book‐keeper in wider senses. He was clearly a pivotal figure during performances but also important in taking care of the company’s precious manuscripts and liaising with the Master of the Revels.