12 June, 1595 - The First Part of Hercules

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

Henslowe writes: y^e 12 of June 1595 ... R at the j pt of herculos ... iij^ll j^s

In modern English: 12^th June, 1595 ... Received at The First Part of Hercules ... £3 and 1 shilling

Hercules fighting the Nemean Lion by
Francisco de Zurbarán (1634)

Today, the Admiral's Men revived The First Part of Hercules, which retold some of the legends of the Greek mythological strongman, perhaps focusing on his Twelve Labours. You can read more about this play in the entry for 7 May..

The company has waited a fortnight to bring back the popular Hercules plays, and today, thanks in part to the Whitsuntide holidays, the Rose is almost full with punters who want to see lions getting bashed and hydras being slain.

But elsewhere in London, trouble is brewing. We should pull back our focus on theatre for a moment and look at the bigger picture, because the mid-1590s were not happy times for everyone. Due to a series of failed harvests, this period saw massive rises in the price of food, and anger over this was beginning to turn into violence. And today, in Billingsgate fish market, a riot broke out, caused by a crowd of apprentices who were protesting rising fish prices.

Riots and fish prices may seem irrelevant to a theatre blog, but today's event is just one in a series of public order offences that will cause the authorities to crack down on large gatherings of people quite soon... so stay tuned.

FURTHER READING

• Carol Chillington Rutter, Documents of the Rose Playhouse (Manchester University Press, 1984), 92.
• M.J. Power, "London and the Control of the 'Crisis' of the 1590s", History 70 (1985), 379.
• "Rebellion by London apprentices in 1595", British Library - Discovering Literature: Shakespeare & Renaissance

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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