4 January, 1595 - Richmond Palace

Henslowe's Diary makes no mention of it, but court records tell us that on this day, 424 years ago, the Admiral's Men performed a play at Richmond Palace.

Richmond Palace was a spectacular royal residence on the banks of the Thames. Sadly, it no longer exists, but if you take a look at my earlier entry on Hampton Court Palace, you will get a sense of what a performance at Richmond might have been like.

Richmond Palace by Anthony Wyngaerde, mid-16th century

We do not know what play the company performed here, so we will just have to imagine them running their lines as they were rowed down the river toward their meeting with the Queen.

FURTHER READING

• John Astington, English Court Theatre, 1558-1642 (Cambridge University Press, 1999), 57-63, 234

Comments?

Did I make a mistake? Do you have a question? Have you anything to add? Please post a comment below!

1 January, 1596 - The Seven Days of the Week and Richmond Palace

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

Henslowe writes: y^e 1 of Jenewary 1595 ... R at the wecke ... xxxxij^s    

In modern English: 1^st January, [1596] ... Received at The Week ... 42 shillings

Welcome to the first day of another year at the Rose! You may have noticed that Henslowe is still calling it 1595; that's because he's using the old style of dating in which the year begins on 25th March. But the Elizabethans still thought of today as New Year's Day and for them there are still six more days of the Christmas holidays left.

For their first play of 1596, the Admiral's Men have revived their enigmatic lost play The Seven Days of the Week, about which we know nothing beyond its title. Perhaps it was an anthology of seven short plays, or perhaps it was about the creation of the world. You can read more about it in the entry for 3rd June. The Seven Days of the Week was once a very popular play but has declined of late. Today, however, on a festive holiday, it has received a large crowd again, recapturing its former glory.

Beyond Henslowe's Diary, there is also a record of the Admiral's Men performing a play to the Queen at Richmond Palace, a long way down the Thames. If the dates are accurate, this was a busy day for the players!

Richmond Palace by Anthony Wyngaerde, mid-16th century

FURTHER READING

On the Richmond Palace performance

• John Astington, English Court Theatre, 1558-1642 (Cambridge University Press, 1999), 234

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?

Did I make a mistake? Do you have a question? Have you anything to add? Please post a comment below!

6 January, 1595 - Greenwich Palace

Today was the Feast of Epiphany, one of the most important festivals in the Elizabethan church year, and the last of the twelve days of Christmas (hence it's also being known as Twelfth Night). It was traditional for the Queen and her court to see a play on this occasion, and this year it was the Admirals' Men who were invited to perform. The evidence is not in Henslowe's Diary but rather in a record of payment to the actors in the accounts of the Lord Chamberlain:

To Edward Alleyn, Richard Jones and John Singer, servants to the Lord Admiral, upon the Council warrant dated at Whitehall 15 March, 1594, for three several comedies or interludes showed by them before Her Majesty in Christmastime last past, viz: the 28th December, on New Year's Day, and Twelfth Day, 22 shillings and by way of Her Majesty reward £10 in all.

We do not know which play the company performed performed to the Queen, but we do know that the show took place in the Great Chamber at Greenwich Palace.

19th-century illustration of the possible appearance of Greenwich Palace.

Greenwich Palace, located on the banks of the Thames, sadly no longer stands: it was demolished in the 1660s and the Old Royal Naval College now stands on its site. We can therefore only imagine the spectacle of seeing the players perform in the great hall of a royal palace. You can read more about the experience of a court performance this in the entry on Lord Strange's Men performing at Hampton Court in 1592.

FURTHER READING

• David Cook and F.P. Wilson, eds., 'Dramatic Records in the Declared Accounts of the Treasurer of the Chamber, 1558-1642', Malone Society Collections (Oxford University Press, 1962), 28-9
• R. Chris Hassell, Jr., Renaissance Drama and the English Church Year (University of Nebraska Press, 1979), 77-93
• John Astington, English Court Theatre, 1558-1642 (Cambridge University Press, 1999)

1 January, 1595 - The Second Part of Tamburlaine and Greenwich Palace

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

Henslowe writes: y^e j of Jenewary 1594 ... R at the 2 pte of tamberlen ... iij^ll ij^s

In modern English: 1^st January, 1595 ... Received at The Second Part of Tamburlaine ... £3 and 2 shillings

Welcome to the first day of another new year at the Rose! You may have noticed that Henslowe is still calling it 1594; that's because he's using the old style of dating in which the year begins on 25th March. But the Elizabethans still thought of today as New Year's Day and for them there are still six more days of the Christmas holidays left.

The mausoleum of Timur in Samarkand

To celebrate the new year, the Admiral's Men have followed yesterday's performance of Tamburlaine with its sequel, in which the conqueror of Asia meets his inevitable doom; you can read more about this play in the entry for 19th December. Today's performance was far more successful than yesterday's, no doubt because the sequel has only been performed once before this season and had not yet become stale with repetition.

 According to court records, the players also performed to Queen Elizabeth at Greenwich today. They'll do this one more time this Christmas, so I'll write more about on 6 January.

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?

Did I make a mistake? Do you have a question? Have you anything to add? Please post a comment below!

28 December, 1594 - Doctor Faustus and Greenwich Palace

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

Henslowe writes: y^e 27 of desembȝ  1594 ... R at docter fostes ... lij^s 

In modern English: [28^th] December, 1594 ... Received at Dr Faustus ... 52 shillings

Faustus summoning Mephistopheles: from the
1616 text of the play 

Today was the Feast of the Holy Innocents, a holiday honouring the infants murdered by King Herod. The Admiral's Men have opted to stage Christopher Marlowe's famous tragedy Dr Faustus, in which a scholar summons a demon and sells his soul to the devil. You can read more about this play in the entry for 2 October.

After a series of extremely disappointing performances, Dr Faustus and his demonic entourage have roared back onto the stage to an almost full Rose. The reason for this success is of course the Christmas season, as Londoners flock to the theatre for some festive necromantic tragedy. 

According to court records, the players also performed to Queen Elizabeth at Greenwich today. They'll do this two more times this Christmas, so I'll write more about these visits later.

What's next? 

There will be no blog entry tomorrow, because 29th December was a Sunday in 1594 and the players did not perform. Henslowe's Diary ... as a Blog! will thus return on the 30th and we'll see the rest of the Christmas season!

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?

Did I make a mistake? Do you have a question? Have you anything to add? Please post a comment below!

1 January, 1593 - A Knack to Know a Knave and Hampton Court Palace

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

Henslowe writes: R at the cnacke the 31 Decembȝ 1592 ... xxx^s

In modern English: Received at The Knack, 1^st January, 1593 ... 30 shillings

The knaves from an Italian
pack of cards, c.1490

Henslowe seems to have written the date wrong today. It's unlikely that the company performed in public on Sunday, and the dates in the diary make more sense if we assume he got himself a day of out sync for today and tomorrow. (This kind of error is quite common in the diary, as Henslowe seems to have entered his box office data in blocks, a long time after the performances, and easily got muddled).

So, today was New Year's Day, a time of festivity. To celebrate, Lord Strange's Men revived their comical morality play A Knack to Know a Knave, about the unmasking of four wicked brothers. It's a deliberately old-fashioned piece featuring devils, clowns and a randy king which they had premiered it at the end of their last season at the Rose.  You can read more about this play in the entry for 10th June.

The actors may have been disappointed by London's reaction, however. Despite the festive season and its long absence from the stage, A Knack to Know a Knave received only thirty shillings, a merely average result, representing a half-full theatre.

But this was not the company's only performance today. Court records show that they also performed a play at Hampton Court Palace again. It must have been an exhausting day for the players.

Incidentally, I'd just like to say that I really like Henslowe's new spelling of 'knack' as 'cnacke'. It makes you wonder how he pronounced 'a cnack to cnow a cnave'...

FURTHER READING

• John Astington, English Court Theatre, 1558-1642 (Cambridge University Press, 1999)

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?

Did I make a mistake? Do you have a question? Have you anything to add? Please post a comment below!

31 December, 1592 - Hampton Court Palace

Lord Strange's Men did not perform at the Rose playhouse today, because it was a Sunday. However, this apparently did not prevent them performing to Queen Elizabeth I and her court at Hampton Court Palace, just as they had done on the 27th.

This was presumably a play to celebrate New Year's Eve, but, as before, we do not know what play they chose. Maybe something with elements of birth and renewal and an upbeat ending, such as Jerusalem or Orlando Furioso? I'm just guessing.

FURTHER READING

• John Astington, English Court Theatre, 1558-1642 (Cambridge University Press, 1999)

27 December, 1592 - Hampton Court Palace

Welcome back to Henslowe's Diary ... as a Blog!  For the last few months our heroes, Lord Strange's Men, have been touring the country, hoping for the ban on theatre in London to be lifted so that they can return to the Rose playhouse. It seems that things are finally looking more optimistic.

Henslowe's list of performances at the Rose does not resume until 29th December, but the records of the court show that Lord Strange's Men were already back in London on the 27th, performing a play to Queen Elizabeth I. We do not know which play they performed, but we do know it took place at Hampton Court Palace, a great house on the Thames that still stands today.



This was the season known as Christmastide, and plays were a normal part of the court's festive celebrations. 27th December was the Feast of St John, the third day of Christmas. In his intriguing book Renaissance Drama and the English Church Year, R. Chris Hassell, Jr. wonders whether the plays performed at court were chosen to fit the themes of the religious festivals that they celebrated, and he cautiously concludes that sometimes they may have been. He says the theme of prescribed readings from the Bible on this particular feast-day was the vanity of human wishes and the eschewing of worldly goods. Perhaps A Looking-Glass for London might have been a suitable choice, but I'm only guessing.

Incidentally, if you happen to be in London this Christmas, Hampton Court Palace is staging a site-specific play about behind-the-scenes activities during an Elizabethan court performance! It's "a heart-warming Christmas story for all the family set at the court of Queen Elizabeth I and performed around the Palace, from the Tudor Kitchens to the Great Hall". Click here for more details.

The hall

Regardless of which play they performed, the company no doubt were impressed by the space they performed it in - the beautiful hall at Hampton Court, which you can still visit today.




If Lord Strange's Men were back in London, they probably already knew that the Rose playhouse would be re-opening in just two days time. Performing to the Queen herself in a spectacular venue must have felt like a wonderful welcome back to their city.

What's next?

There will be no blog post tomorrow because Lord Strange's Men are not known to have performed on the 28th. Most likely they were busy with the final preparations for their return to the Rose. Henslowe's Diary ... as a Blog! will thus return on 29th December. See you then!

FURTHER READING

• R. Chris Hassell, Jr., Renaissance Drama and the English Church Year (University of Nebraska Press, 1979), 29-37.
• John Astington, English Court Theatre, 1558-1642 (Cambridge University Press, 1999)