1 January, 1597 - Vortigern

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 1596 ... R at valteger ... xxxxv^s 

In modern English: 1^st January, [1597] ... Received at Vortigern ... 45 shillings

Vortigern in his burning
castle. From a 14th-century
manuscript of Peter of
Langtoft's Chronicle of
England.  

Happy New Year! On the first day of 1597, an important holiday in the Elizabethan calendar, the Admiral's Men have chosen to perform Vortigern, their play about the legendary British king whose actions brought about the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons in Britain. You can read more about this play in the entry for 4th December, 1596. 

The box office for Vortigern is greatly improved today, no doubt because many Londoners are in festive mood again. 

What's next?

There will be no blog entry tomorrow, as 2 January was a Sunday in 1597 and the players did not perform. Henslowe's Diary ... as a Blog! will thus return on the 3rd, for a week that will include the surprise return of an old favourite. 

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, 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!

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!

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?

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!