24 April, 1592 - 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 24 ap^relle 1592 ... xxviij^s 

In modern English: Received at Hieronimo, 24^th April, 1592 ... 28 shillings 

Woodcut from the 1615 edition of The Spanish Tragedy.

Today, Lord Strange's Men gave another performance of Hieronimo, which is almost certainly an alternate title for Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy, a play that they had previously performed a week and a half ago. You can read more about this play in the entry for the 14th of March. As was their occasional practice, they performed the play the day after its companion piece The Spanish Comedy, but in this particular instance a Sunday intervened between the two.

The company has settled into a groove of performing The Spanish Tragedy approximately once a week, but this has not produced the spectacular box office that the play was capable of. An interesting question is whether the play was more popular when performed the day after The Spanish Comedy. If you look at the list below you could argue that it was, up until today. But could today's weak showing be due to that Sunday break intervening between the plays and interrupting the flow? The question is still open, I think, so let's keep an eye on it...

• Tuesday, 14th March - 71 shillings (performed the day after the Comedy)
• Monday, 20th March - 38 shillings (performed as an individual play)
• Friday, 31st March - 60 shillings (performed the day after the Comedy)
• Friday, 7th April - 26 shillings (performed as an individual play)
• Friday, 14th April - 33 shillings (performed as an individual play)
• Monday, 24th April - 28 shillings (performed one working day after the Comedy, but with Sunday interrupting)

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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