1 January, 1594 - Buckingham

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

Henslowe writes: R at buckingam the j of Jenewary 1593 ... lviij^s 

In modern English: Received at Buckingham, 1^st January, 1594 ... 53 shillings

Edward Stafford, 3rd Duke of Buckingham,
one possible subject of this lost play

Welcome to the first day of a new year at the Rose! (But you may have noticed that Henslowe is still calling it 1593; that's because he's using the old style of dating in which the year begins on 25th March.) In Elizabethan London, that meant there were six more days of the Christmas holidays left.

Today, for the first time since their arrival at the Rose last week, Sussex's Men returned to a play that they had already staged. They chose to perform Buckingham, a play now lost, which was probably a tragedy about one of the dukes of Buckingham in English history; you can read more about it in the entry for 30 December 1593.

The decision to restage Buckingham is a surprising one, because the company had last performed it only three days ago; it was normal to leave a longer gap between performances of a one play. But the decision seems to have been a good one: Buckingham brought in impressive box office, and indeed made a bit more money than last time.

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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