22 April, 1592 - The Comedy of Hieronimo

Here's what Lord Strange's Men performed at the Rose playhouse on this day, 424 years ago...

Henslowe writes: R at the comodey Jeronymo the 22 ap^rell 1591 ... xvij^s 

In modern English: Received at The Comedy of Hieronimo, 22^nd April, 1592 ... 17 shillings

Today, Lord Strange's Men gave another performance of The Comedy of Hieronimo, which they had last performed just under a fortnight ago. This lost play, also known as The Spanish Comedy of Don Horatio, was most likely about the events leading up to those in Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy (you can read more about it in the entry for 23rd February). Today's performance received poor box office, considerably less than that of the last three outings.

On Monday, Lord Strange's Men will perform The Spanish Tragedy, thereby staging the two plays consecutively in order to emphasize their linked narratives as they have occasionally done in the past, but this time with an awkward break caused by the day off on Sunday. An interesting question is whether the Comedy was more popular when performed in tandem with the Tragedy. But looking at the data below, I cannot yet see any strong evidence for that; other factors must be affecting the box office instead.

• Wednesday, 23rd February - 13 shillings and sixpence (performed as an individual play)
• Monday, 13th March - 29 shillings (performed the day before The Spanish Tragedy)
• Wednesday, 30th March - 39 shillings (performed the day before The Spanish Tragedy)
• Monday, 10th April - 28 shillings (performed as an individual play)
• Saturday, 22nd April - 17 shillings  (performed one working day before The Spanish Tragedy, but with a Sunday intervening)

What's next?

There will be no blog entry tomorrow because 23rd April was a Sunday in 1592. Henslowe's Diary ... as a Blog! will thus return on 24th April, for a week that will include a new play along with the usual suspects.

Henslowe links

• Transcript of this page of the Diary (from W.W. Greg's 1904 edition)
• Facsimile of this page of the Diary (from the Henslowe-Alleyn Digitisation Project)

Comments?

Did I make a mistake? Do you have a question? Have you anything to add? Please post a comment below!