7
Some of the concerns that underlay the “War of the Theaters” were allayed by the theatrical settlement reached when James I came peacefully to the throne, following the death of Elizabeth in March 1603. Considering how many other issues must have weighed with him, the beginnings of that settlement emerged surprisingly quickly. On May 19 a royal patent was issued to Shakespeare’s company, creating them the King’s Men. Over the next year or so all the other leading London companies similarly passed into royal patronage: the Admiral’s Men became Prince Henry’s Men, Worcester’s Men became the Queen’s (i.e Queen Anne’s) Men, and the Children of the Chapel, the Children of the Queen’s Revels (also patronized by Queen Anne). Only the small Paul’s Boys were not so graced, and that company went out of business by 1606.
This was a logical development from the de facto situation at the end of Elizabeth’s reign. As the Virgin Queen she had only one royal household. James initially had three – his own, his Queen’s, and his elder son’s, Prince Henry’s; eventually this would extend to include households for the younger son, Prince Charles, and his daughter, Princess Elizabeth. All of these patronized acting companies over time, and all of them brought the players in to court to entertain them during the Revels season. This led to an enormous increase in theatrical consumption there. In James’s first Revels season, for example, the King’s Men were called to court nine times – they had never been called more than six times during Elizabeth’s reign, and usually less. Moreover the new Queen’s Men also played twice and the Prince’s men five times; each of the boys’ companies was also called once. Companies did not only play for their own patron. The King’s Men, for example, performed twice for Prince Henry, who also paid for the two performances by the Queen’s Men.
And even when the king paid for it, it did not necessarily mean that he attended. The great extra demand for performances has sometimes led to the assumption that James was inordinately fond of theatre. He liked it well enough, but probably not as much as his wife and son (Barroll, 1988, 454ff; 1991, 22–69). He did, however, recognize – as Elizabeth had – that court entertainment befitted his princely magnificence and indulged it in that spirit. It was, however, by no means inevitable that he would choose the Chamberlain’s Men as his personal players. Their patron, the second Lord Hunsdon, had been ailing and his successor as Lord Chamberlain, Thomas Howard, soon to be Earl of Suffolk, had been deputizing. This may explain why they had only been called twice during Elizabeth’s last Revels season, 1602/3, against three times by the Admiral’s Men.
Someone else must have advocated for them. Edmund Tilney may have been consulted, as Master of the Revels, but decisions of this nature were probably made at a higher level, and it is unlikely that much serious business was done without reference to Sir Robert Cecil, the man who had engineered James’s smooth transition to the throne. The young Earl of Pembroke, one candidate for the “fair youth” in Shakespeare’s Sonnets has also been suggested. A factor that may have weighed heavily against the Admiral’s Men is that the incomparable Alleyn was known to be close to retirement. He had in fact retired once, in the 1590s, but had returned, possibly to boost the Fortune; some said at the request of the Queen herself. But he seems finally to have retired early in the new reign, pursuing other business goals.1
Since Shakespeare came into the public record with the Chambelain’s Men in 1595, there had been an ever closer correlation between his career and the links of his company with the royal court. Their appointment as the King’s Men was the last step in that process. We need to be clear, however, about the nature of this relationship. Some scholars have downplayed its significance by comparison with their commercial activities. Bernard Beckerman, for example, weighed its impact on their income:
From Elizabeth, and later from James, the Chamberlain‐King’s Men received ₤873 between 1599 and 1609, of which amount ₤70 was for relief of the company during plague time, and ₤30 for reimbursement for expenses incurred during unusually lengthy travel to and from the Court. Thus the annual average for playing was ₤77.6s., with the court payments in the later years substantially greater than in the early one. Grants from Elizabeth never totaled more than 5 per cent of the income the company earned at the Globe. Under James the percentage rose to a high of about fifteen by 1609. The increase in Court support, evident in these figures, ultimately led the Globe company to appeal increasingly to an aristocratic audience. But throughout the decade we are considering [1599–1609], the actors depend on the pence of a large, heterogeneous public more than upon the bounty of their prince. (1962, 22–3, citing ES, 4:166–75)
Beckerman concedes that “The players certainly tendered courtesy and respect to the Court, which after all was their main defense against puritanical suppression” (23), but the economics of the situation required them to cater first and foremost to “a large, heterogeneous public.”
I suggest that the logic of this is almost exactly back‐to‐front. The Lord Chamberlain’s Men were only able to make the very substantial sums we presume that they did at the Globe because the court protected them and gave them very significant privileges. Both Elizabeth and James made extensive use of monopolies to reward people in their service, an indirect form of payment which cost them nothing (though, as the House of Commons repeatedly complained, it cost the people a good deal). Elizabeth, for example, granted the Earl of Leicester a monopoly to tax imports of sweet wines, a monopoly which passed after his death to the Earl of Essex. The situation of the leading players was not identical, but it was analogous. Only a small number of companies ever had access to the profits that could be generated from sustained playing in London, and that access was only granted to those who served the court. They always knew which side their bread was buttered on.
The appointment of Shakespeare’s company as the King’s Men was thus a major coup. Their new licence names William Shakespeare, Richard Burbage, Augustine Phillips, John Heminge, Henry Condell, William Sly, Robert Armin, and Richard Cowley. A familiar name missing is that of Thomas Pope, one of the originators of the company and one of the first housekeepers in the Globe. He had apparently retired through ill‐health, making out his will on July 22, 1603; it was proved the following February. With his death the first shares in the Globe went outside the company, to his legatees, though this did not raise any problems in the first instance. But Pope is replaced among the sharers by a new name, in fact the first on the list, Lawrence Fletcher.
The addition of Fletcher to the company’s sharers is sometimes dismissed as a polite concession to the king, since he appears in no other record of the company’s activities. Yet he could have been a useful colleague, even if only as a consultant. Fletcher had been connected with the new king since at least 1594, when he was one of the “Inglis comedianis” recorded in Edinburgh, perhaps to take part in festivities for the baptism of Prince Henry Frederick on August 30 (Dibdin, 1888, 20). They received a generous gift of ₤333 6s. 8d. (Scots) from the king.2 Fletcher’s association with this group, apparently its leader, is vouched for in the gossip of the English agent in Edinburgh. In March 1595 George Nicholson wrote to Robert Bowes, the treasurer of Berwick: “The King heard that Fletcher, the player, was hanged, and told him [i.e. Nicholson] and Robert Ashton [a Scottish courtier] so, in merry words, not believing it, saying very pleasantly that if it were true he would hang them also” (cited in ES, 2: 266). James was clearly already familiar with Fletcher.
He became much more so in the years 1599–1601 when the return of Fletcher’s company caused a direct confrontation between the king and the Kirk of Edinburgh.3 They performed several times before James and were then allowed to purchase a warrant “to the bailiffs of Edinburgh, to get them an house within the town. Upon Monday, the 12th of November [1599], they gave warning by trumpets and drums through the streets of Edinburgh, to all that pleased, to come to the Black Friars’ Wynd [a narrow lane] to see the acting of their comedies” (Calderwood, 1842–49, 5: 765). The four sessions of the Kirk were convened and passed an act “that none resort to these profane comedies, for eschewing offence of God, and of evil example to others” (ibid.). This angered the king, who told their representatives that the act contravened the warrant he had granted the actors, which was clearly intended to allow them to perform before the public. He ordered them to rescind it or face the consequences, and eventually the Kirk backed down. Whatever James’s personal interest in plays and players, he was fully prepared to stand up on their behalf to the Calvinist Kirk when it attempted to cut across his royal prerogative. The actors received several gifts from the king, culminating in December 1599 with one matching that of 1594. By 1601 they were able to travel to Aberdeen, bearing a letter of recommendation from the king and styling themselves his majesty’s servants; the burgh register specifically records the presence of “Laurence Fletcher, comedian to his Majesty” (ES, 2: 269). All of this was a useful preparation for James’s time in England. When he entered his new kingdom he did so well prepared to face down any threats to his court’s consumption of theatre, and comfortable with the idea that royal players should normally earn their living commercially, with only modest subventions from their patrons.
People from the theatrical world in England, like everyone else, looked to see what would come with the new reign when Elizabeth died. Only a week after her death, when the pronouncement of James as her successor was unopposed, the Corporation of London began preparations for his triumphal entry into the city, with a number of ornamental arches along the route. Thomas Dekker was appointed to write appropriate speeches. Jonson was commissioned to write an entertainment for Queen Anne and Prince Henry on their journey south, at Althorp, the Northamptonshire estate of Sir John Spenser (2012f, 2: 393–412). He was also brought belatedly into the writing for James’s entry into the city, which the plague delayed until March 1604. In all these quarters, people were anxious to know the tastes of the new royal family. Nobody knew James’s taste in theatre, or that of Queen Anne, better than Fletcher, and that might have made him a useful ally in the early days of the new reign and of the reconstituted company.
The most immediate issue to the company in mid‐1603 was the very plague which caused James’s royal entry to be postponed. It followed hard on a precautionary closing of the playhouses when Elizabeth was clearly dying. They then remained closed almost continuously until the following Spring, losing the players a whole year’s income. The situation became so acute during the winter (with touring impractical and no sign of the plague relenting) the king presented Burbage with £30 “for the relief of himself and the rest of his company, being prohibited to present any plays publicly in or around London … by way of his Majesty’s free gift” (ES, 4: 168–9). The extra performances at court must also have been welcome in this regard though, as we have noted, the income from such commissions was less significant than the profits from public performances which continuing royal favor normally made possible (see p. 278).
The plague also inhibited royal business. Protocol demanded that the king’s coronation should take place as soon as possible, and it did so in July 1603, but the public were banned and a ceremonial procession through the streets of London was deferred until the plague lifted, which turned out to be March 15, 1604. For that event each of those named in the new patent for the King’s Men was entitled to receive four and a half yards of scarlet‐red cloth for his livery, being now an unpaid Groom of the Chamber and so a member (albeit a lowly one) of the king’s household (Law, 1910). There is no record of them actually marching in the procession, but this is a marker of their growing status and prestige. The following year, moreover, they wore the livery in earnest. A long and intermittent war with Spain was ended in 1604 by the Treaty of London, and in August the first Spanish ambassador for many years was welcomed in some style; he stayed in the Queen’s palace, Somerset House, and was waited on for eighteen days by twelve members of the King’s Men (some of them evidently not sharers). They were paid the princely sum of £21 12s., and the line between acting and reality must have seemed very blurred. Such developments led the satirical writer, J. Cocke to observe a decade later how times had changed, now “that players may not be called rogues: For they be chief ornaments of his Majesty’s Revels” (“A Common Player,” 1615; quoted in ES 4: 257).