Straws in the Wind

Let us consider a few of the straws in the wind, blown at the actors by those power struggles, in the years when Shakespeare was growing up. In 1572 Parliament passed An Act for the Punishment of Vagabonds, which was meant to control the growing numbers of “masterless men,” people with no fixed abode or regular means of support, uncomfortably outside the traditional structures of control: Edgar’s disguise as “Poor Tom” in King Lear gives us a flavor of the problem. Among those included in these categories were “Common Players in interludes, & Minstrels, not belonging to any Baron of this Realm or towards any other honourable Personage of greater Degree” (EPF, 62; see Beier, 1985). This made it essential for any players who wished to make a living by touring beyond the county in which they resided to have the patronage of one of the aristocratic elite of the country. There were only about eighty noble families in England in Elizabeth’s reign and by no means all of them wanted to be associated with professional players. The Act removed the former right of knights and gentry to offer such patronage, making it an exclusive privilege. Sir Ralph Lane of Northamptonshire, for example, patronized a company led by Laurence Dutton, which was proficient enough to be called to perform at court in the winter of 1571/2. But the following year they had had to find themselves a patron of greater standing: the Earl of Lincoln, the Lord Admiral (Gurr, 1996, 170–1).

Even the Earl of Leicester’s players were disturbed enough to seek reassurance from their patron:

we therefore, your humble servants and daily orators your players, for avoiding all inconvenience that may grow by reason of the said statute, are bold to trouble your lordship with this our suit, humbly desiring your honour that (as you have been always our good lord and master) you will now vouchsafe to retain us at this present as your household servants and daily waiters, not that we mean to crave any further stipend or benefit at your lordship’s hands but our liveries as we have had, and also your honour’s licence to travel amongst our friends as we do usually once a year, and as other noblemen’s players do and have done in time past, whereby we may enjoy our faculty in your lordship’s name as we have done heretofore. (EPF, 205)

They persist in the polite fiction that their touring amounts to “travel amongst our friends as we do usually once a year,” as once it might have been. But it was by now a fully professional operation, albeit conducted within the courtesies of Elizabethan social constraint. The first signatory to this letter was the leader of Leicester’s Men, the aforementioned James Burbage. No individual was more influential in shaping the theatrical world that Shakespeare knew. He probably visited Stratford with Leicester’s Men in 1573/4 and possibly 1576/7, though by the latter date he had other business on his mind: the building of the Theatre, the first successful purpose‐built playhouse in London since Roman times.9

Box 1.1 James Burbage10

James Burbage (circa 1531–1597) was a joiner (woodworker), actor, and theatrical entrepreneur. His family appear to derive from Bromley in Kent, some ten miles south‐east of London. He was apprenticed in London as a joiner, but by 1572 was established as a player with Leicester’s Men. Indeed by then he was their leader, so it is likely that he had been playing for some time. This troupe was founded in 1564 and, under the patronage of the Queen’s favorite, had become a leading company. Burbage was the lead signatory on a letter to the earl, begging him to certify them as members of his household, in order to avoid legislation that would render them vagabonds and masterless men (p. 29). In May 1574 the first royal patent to players was issued to Leicester‘s Men, licensing them to play in London and elsewhere under the authority of the court.

On April 23 1559 Burbage had married Ellen, the daughter of Thomas Brayne, a tailor and freeman of the Girdlers’ Company. Two of their children have significant roles in our narrative: Cuthbert Burbage, baptised on June 15, 1565, who was never a player but was closely associated with the theatrical business all his life; and Richard Burbage, baptized on July 7, 1568, who was to play Richard III, Hamlet, Othello, and (we believe) most of the other leading tragic roles in Shakespeare’s plays. Ellen Burbage’s brother, John Brayne, was a member of the Grocer’s Company (guild). In 1567 Brayne hired two carpenters to build a playhouse in the yard of the Red Lion, a farmhouse east of Aldgate, near Mile End in East London. It apparently consisted of little more than a stage (5 ft [1.52 m] high, 40 ft [12.19 m] “in length,” north to south, 30 ft [9.14 m] “in breadth,” east to west, with a portion to be left unboarded, for a trapdoor), a “turret” rising some 30 ft above the stage, with a floor some 7 ft [2.13 m]from the top (possibly for upper‐level playing), and scaffolding to hold the audience. But it was the first purpose‐fitted professional playhouse in England since Roman times. It was due to open with The Story of Sampson on July 8, 1567; it did not, however, flourish and little more is known about it (EPF, 290–4).

In 1576 Brayne went into partnership with Burbage to build a much more substantial playhouse named, on Roman precedent, the Theatre; doubtless, like Philip Henslowe’s grocer partner in the later building of the Rose, he expected to make a profit from the food and drink sold on‐site, as well as the playing. The details of their enterprise are related below (see p. 83ff).

By 1584 Burbage had left Leicester’s patronage (possibly after Leicester’s Men lost many of their leading players to the newly‐created Queen’s Men) and sought instead that of the queen‘s cousin Henry, Lord Hunsdon, already a Privy Councilor and shortly to become Lord Chamberlain of the royal household. This was of some consequence in June of that year, when a series of disturbances in the region of the Theatre and the neighboring Curtain led the City of London authorities to seek their “suppressing and pulling down” (ES, 4: 298). William Fleetwood, the Recorder of London (the City’s principal judge), reported to Lord Treasurer Burghley in a letter of June 18 that he had been advised:

to send for the owner of the Theatre, who was a stubborn fellow, and to bind him. I did so; he sent me word that he was my lord of Hunsdon’s man, and that he would not come at me, but he would in the morning ride to my lord; then I sent the under‐sheriff for him and he brought him to me; and at his coming he stouted me out very hasty; and in the end I showed him my lord his master’s hand [signature] and then he was more quiet; but to die for it he would not be bound.11 And then I, minding to send him to prison, he made suit that he might be bound to appear at the [court of] oyer and determiner, the which is tomorrow12; where he said he was sure the court would not bind him, being a Councilor’s man. And so I have granted his request, where he shall be sure to be bound or else like to do worse. (ibid.)

It is not clear how matters were resolved, but the playhouses remained safe.

Burbage’s relations with John Brayne deteriorated, with money at the heart of the contention. Keeping track of profits, probably derived from a share of the takings when a company of players used the Theatre as a London base, must have been difficult – and readily disputable. Brayne died in 1586 without making a will, and his widow Margaret pursued his claim to a moiety (half) of the playhouse and its profits. She made Robert Miles, a freeman of the Goldsmiths’ Company, her agent. The matter dragged on in the courts between 1590 and Margaret’s own death in 1593. This included the notorious events of November 16, 1590, recounted elsewhere, when Richard Burbage repelled Miles and Margaret Brayne with a broom (see p. 61). A further confrontation occurred in May 1591, with James Burbage still loudly refusing to accede to any court orders. And only days after that there was a falling out between Burbage and members of the Admiral’s Men, over the division of the take, which led to the Admiral’s and Strange’s Men leaving the Theatre and transferring to the Rose. Burbage was indeed a “stubborn fellow,” given to “stout[ing]” people out.

As early as 1585 Burbage attempted to extend his lease on the land on which the Theatre stood. But the landlord, Giles Allen, evaded the request and it eventually became clear that he would not extend it beyond April 1597 – by which time it was the permanent base of Shakespeare’s Chamberlain’s Men. In 1596 the Burbages moved from their house in Shoreditch, near the Theatre, to Blackfriars, a prosperous liberty on the north bank of the Thames, within the City’s walls but outside its jurisdiction. Between 1576 and 1584 the Children of the Chapel Royal, under their Master William Hunnis and his deputy, Richard Farrant, had performed their plays for the public in a playhouse constructed in the hall of the great former friary complex of the Blackfriars. Burbage now paid £600 for a different part of this old stone complex and a further £400 to have it converted to a splendid new playhouse. Clearly some of this was done on credit. As Cuthbert deposed many years later: “our father purchased it at extreme rates & made it into a playhouse with great charge and trouble” (Gurr, 2004a: Appendix 3, 278). In November 1596, however, some of the more distinguished residents of the Blackfriars petitioned the Privy Council to make known “what inconveniencies were likely to fall upon them by a common playhouse which was then preparing to be erected there, whereupon their honours then forbade the use of the said house, for plays” (ES, 4: 320). Embarrassingly these petitioners had included the second Lord Hunsdon, who had inherited the patronage of the Chamberlain’s Men from his deceased father (p. 130). Apparently the boy players who were formally attached to the court had been acceptable in the Blackfriars, but the adult players would make this a “common playhouse,” which was not.

James Burbage did not live to see the resolution of the problems this posed for Shakespeare’s company, denied the use of both their old and new playhouses. I pursue this elsewhere (see p. 198). He died in February 1597. He left only a modest £37, but he had already conveyed the lease of the Theatre and its residual value to Cuthbert, and the Blackfriars property to Richard. Fortunately they were to collaborate amicably about realizing the potential of both properties. James Burbage’s gambles in building both the Theatre and the second Blackfriars playhouse were foundational to the whole history of professional playing in Elizabethan London, and in particular to that of Shakespeare’s Chamberlain’s Men.

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