4 December, 1594 - Tasso's Melancholy

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

Henslowe writes: y^e 3 of desembȝ 1594 ... R at tasso ... vj^s 

In modern English: [4^th] December, 1594 ... Received at Tasso ... 6 shillings

Tasso in the Madhouse
by Eugene Delacroix (1839)

Today, the Admiral's Men returned to Tasso's Melancholy, a lost play that dramatized the lovesick insanity of the Italian poet Torquato Tasso; you can read more about it in the entry for 13th August.

The players are now entering a pattern of performing Tasso's Melancholy every three weeks. Today's box office is catastrophic, however; it's almost as bad as the record-breakingly sparse attendance at The Grecian Comedy two days ago. The period of Advent may be continuing to harm business.

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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