1 January, 1595 - The Second Part of Tamburlaine and Greenwich Palace

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

Henslowe writes: y^e j of Jenewary 1594 ... R at the 2 pte of tamberlen ... iij^ll ij^s

In modern English: 1^st January, 1595 ... Received at The Second Part of Tamburlaine ... £3 and 2 shillings

Welcome to the first day of another new year at the Rose! You may have noticed that Henslowe is still calling it 1594; that's because he's using the old style of dating in which the year begins on 25th March. But the Elizabethans still thought of today as New Year's Day and for them there are still six more days of the Christmas holidays left.

The mausoleum of Timur in Samarkand

To celebrate the new year, the Admiral's Men have followed yesterday's performance of Tamburlaine with its sequel, in which the conqueror of Asia meets his inevitable doom; you can read more about this play in the entry for 19th December. Today's performance was far more successful than yesterday's, no doubt because the sequel has only been performed once before this season and had not yet become stale with repetition.

 According to court records, the players also performed to Queen Elizabeth at Greenwich today. They'll do this one more time this Christmas, so I'll write more about on 6 January.

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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