17 December, 1594 - Tamburlaine

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

Henslowe writes: y^e 17 of desembȝ 1594 ... R at tamberlen ... xxxj^s 

In modern English: 17^th December, 1594 ... Received at Tamburlaine ... 31 shillings.

Illustration of the historical Tamburlaine
from Richard Knolles' General History
of the Turks (1603).

Today, the players performed Tamburlaine, Christopher Marlowe's spectacular epic about the bloodthirsty conqueror of Asia. You can read more about this play in the entry for 30th August.

Tamburlaine did not receive a large audience when it was last performed, nearly three weeks ago, but today it did considerably better. One reason may be that the audience knew that the sequel would be appearing in this theatre very soon; perhaps they were treating today's performance as the 'previously on'.

What's next?

There will be no blog entry tomorrow because Henslowe records no performance on that date. Henslowe's Diary ... as a Blog! will thus return on the 19th with  whole lot more Tamburlaine. See you then!

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!