3 March, 1597 - That Will Be Shall Be and a rival playhouse

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

Henslowe writes:  begynyng in leant marche 1597 | 3 |  tt at what wilbe shalbe ... | 00 | 09 

In modern English: Beginning in Lent ... 3^rd March, 1597  ... total at What Will Be Shall Be ... 9 shillings 

Welcome back! Today, after being silent for just over a fortnight, the Rose has re-opened. But the circumstances are rather mysterious. One might have assumed that the recent closure was due to the ongoing season of Lent, a time of religious austerity. Yet today, the company is back to work with three weeks of Lent still remaining. 

The Swan playhouse on a 1627 map
(at the bottom, labelled 'olde Playe house')

The closure may in fact have had more to do with some bad news: a new playhouse has opened, less than ten minute's walk from the Rose! Named the Swan, it was built by an entrepreneur and landowner, Francis Langley, and is now occupied by Pembroke's Men who are performing plays there.  

Henslowe has been aware of the looming problem of the Swan for some time. The playhouse seems to be have been constructed gradually during 1594 and 1595, but it may have been standing empty until now (for a summary of the Swan's history, see its entry in the Map of Early Modern London project). 

As for Pembroke's Men, we briefly heard tell of them back in September, 1593, when they were struggling terribly during the plague, and they also appeared at the Rose for a few days in June, 1594. Since then, they have been touring the country, lacking a London home. Finally, they have found one, just down the road from the Admiral's Men.

This is bad news for Henslowe. To make matters worse, two of the Admiral's Men's players, Thomas Downton and Richard Jones, have defected from the Rose to join Pembroke's at the Swan. Perhaps the recent break was less about piety and more about trying to find replacement actors. 

Henslowe and the Admiral's Men have regrouped and have reopened the Rose despite Lent. However, as we will see, they will often perform only on alternate days, perhaps as a gesture to the season. 

For their reopening, the Admiral's Men have chosen That Will Be Shall Be, an enigmatic lost play about which you can read more in the entry for 30 December, 1596. But if the company were expecting a throng of grateful Londoners who had missed them, they are sorely mistaken. Today's box office is tiny, indicating a mostly empty theatre. Perhaps the Swan is offering something more enticing?

A female archer tries to take down a war elephant. The man on the
right appears to share the sentiments of this play's title.
From the Smithfield Decretals (c.1340)

What's next?

As mentioned above, the Admiral's Men are often performing only on alternate days for the season of Lent. Henslowe's Diary ... as a Blog! will thus return on 5 March. See you then!

FURTHER READING

The Swan and the Rose in 1597

• Carol Chillington Rutter, Documents of the Rose Playhouse  (Manchester University Press, 1985), 110.
• "The Swan", Map of Early Modern London (2020), accessed March 2021.

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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