Leicester and others at the court may have reflected on the consequences for themselves of Parliament’s statute restricting the patronage of players. Certainly in 1574 his players stole a march on their rivals. They were granted a royal patent calculated to protect them from the attentions of lesser authorities. It “licensed and authorised” them “to use, exercise, and occupy the art and faculty of playing comedies, tragedies, interludes, stage plays, and such other like as they have already used and studied … as well for the recreation of our loving subjects, as for our solace and pleasure when we shall think good to see them.” This applied “as well within our City of London and liberties of the same, as also within the liberties and freedoms of any our cities, towns, boroughs &c. … throughout our realm of England.” They were to be allowed to play “without any your lets, hindrance or molestation,” subject to some key conditions: “Provided that the said comedies [etc.] be by the Master of our Revels … before seen and allowed, and that the same be not published or shown in the time of common prayer, or in the time of great and common plague in our said City of London” (EPF, 206).
There were constant concerns about the players drawing people away from the churches and also helping to spread the plague in London – a problem which only grew as the city did. The patent looked to answer those concerns, and also to address what amounted to the issue of censorship: who should decide what was acceptable to be performed? The court put itself forward as the true arbiter, in the form of the Master of the Revels, whose primary function was to oversee theatricals and entertainment for the Queen. Any play “seen and allowed” by him was deemed to be fit to be shown before her and should not therefore be challenged by others. This was soon to be extended to a system of censorship and licensing for the plays of all major companies but was resisted, notably, by City of London authorities, who really wanted to apply their own terms and conditions (Dutton 1991 and see p. 84ff).
The patent specifically draws attention to “our solace and pleasure when we shall think good to see them” – the Queen’s royal plural. At Christmas 1578 the Privy Council wrote to the Lord Mayor of London, requesting him:
to suffer the Children of her Majesty’s Chapel, the servants of the Lord Chamberlain [the Earl of Sussex], the Earl of Warwick, the Earl of Leicester, the Earl of Essex and the Children of Paul’s, and no companies else, to exercise playing within the City, whom their Lordships have only allowed thereunto by reason that the companies aforenamed are appointed to play this time of Christmas before her Majesty.
(Gurr, 1996, 55)
The battle was developing over rights to perform in and around London. The Privy Council’s trump card was invariably that playing must be allowed because it amounted to rehearsing for performance at court, before the Queen. But, with some concession to the City authorities, such playing was henceforth to be limited to an elite circle of troupes who had a realistic chance of being asked to perform at court. What the Privy Council expected in return was that the adult players be allowed to perform in inner‐city inns, which was always their preference in winter until the practice was phased out in the 1590s.13 The favored companies would change over time, as patrons faded away or tastes changed, but they never numbered above six (as here) and usually rather less. This would be critical to Shakespeare’s career.
One last straw in the wind: in 1575 the Laurence Dutton whom we last observed moving from Sir Robert Lane’s company to that of Lord Admiral Clinton now moved (with his brother, John) to that of the Earl of Warwick, one of those companies listed in 1578 as “appointed to play this time of Christmas before her Majesty.” For some reason the two brothers moved again in 1580, to a new company established by the Earl of Oxford. This elicited an anonymous satirical response: “The Duttons and their fellow‐players, forsaking the Earl of Warwick their master, became followers of the Earl of Oxford, and wrote themselves his comedians, which certain gentlemen altered and made chameleons” (ES, 2: 98). (The Elizabethans commonly described players as “comedians.” It does not imply that they only appeared in comic plays.)Wry verses followed. But this pointed to serious underlying issues: the quasi‐feudal ties of servants to their masters were being preempted by other forces, which must have boiled down to money. The precise motivation here is actually rather opaque. The defection of the Duttons and some of their followers seems to have ensured that Warwick’s Men never appeared at court again and the company may even have been wound up. But Oxford’s Men were not invited to court until 1584, by which time (as we shall see) the Duttons had moved on again. They were evidently chancers, but the market was moving in their direction.