28 September, 1594 - Cutlack

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

Henslowe writes: y^e 26 of septmbȝ 1594 ... R at cuttlacke ... xiij^s 

In modern English: [28^th] September, 1594 ... Received at Cutlack ... 13 shillings

Illustration of Belinus (or Brennius, it's not clear)
from Holinshed's Chronicles (1577)

Today, for one last time, the the Admiral's Men revived Cutlack, their play about the eponymous Danish king and his violent intervention into a civil war in ancient Britain. You can read more about this play in the entry for 16 May, 1594.

There is a cull going on in Henslowe's Rose. Yesterday, we said goodbye to The Massacre at Paris. Today, Cutlack bites the dust. This once-popular play, which we first met back in May, has hit rock bottom of late, and the company has given up on it. Few people came to the Rose to say goodbye to the bombastic Dane.

What's next?

There will be no blog entry tomorrow because September 29th was a Sunday in 1594 and the players did not perform. Henslowe's Diary ... as a Blog! will thus return on September 30th, for a week that will include the return of a much-loved classic and of something a bit more meh!

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?

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