8 April, 1594 - The Jew of Malta

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

Henslowe writes: R at the Jewe of malta the 7 of ap^rell 1594 ... xxvj^s

In modern English: Received at The Jew of Malta, 8^th April, 1594 ... 26 shillings

Caravaggio's portrait of the Grand

Master of the Knights of Malta,

1607-8.

Good news: Henslowe has finally noticed that he's been writing the wrong year in his entries and is now correctly using 1594. Bad news: he's muddled the other dates and is now out of sync by one day. I have a suspicion that deep down he doesn't care...

Anyway, today Sussex's Men and the Queen's Men revived again The Jew of Malta, the satirical comic tragedy by Christopher Marlowe. You can read more about this play in the blog entry for 26th February 1592.

The companies were returning to The Jew of Malta after only four days, perhaps hoping that this popular play would draw its typically large crowd. If so, they were disappointed: the audience was surprisingly small, filling less than half the theatre. The festive period of the week after Easter was well and truly over, and Londoners clearly had better things to do.

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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