8 January, 1593 - Hieronimo

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

Henslowe writes: R at Jeronymo the 8 of Jenewarye 1593 ... xxij^s

In modern English: Received at Hieronimo, 8^th January, 1593 ... 22 shillings 

Woodcut from the 1615 edition of The Spanish Tragedy.

Today, the company hastily revived one of the biggest successes of last week. Hieronimo is almost certainly an alternate title for Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy, a famous and much-loved play about the revenge of a grieving father for his son's death. You can read more about this play in the entry for 14th March, 1592.

The company would, however, have been disappointed by the response of Londoners to this performance, as the audience was much smaller than last week's. Clearly one performance of Hieronimo was enough to satisfy most theatre fans. And perhaps Londoners were focusing more on their daily lives after the excesses of the Christmas season.

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)

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