31 October, 1597 - Friar Spendleton

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

Henslowe writes: octobȝ | 31 | ne | tt at fryer splendelton |  02 | 00

In modern English: October 31^st, [1597] ... total at Friar Spendleton ... £2 [i.e. 40 shillings]

Welcome back! After another mysterious gap in performances, the Rose is open for business again with a new play! But the end of the Diary approaches: Henslowe's box office records will cease, without fanfare or spectacle, on 5 November. Prepare a handkerchief.

Portrait of a Camaldulense
Friar by Moroni (1560s)

Today was the premiere of Friar Spendleton, a new play, now lost.  Unfortunately, there is nothing more we can say about it. No character of that name appears elsewhere, and it is thus impossible to know the story was about. Perhaps, given the attitudes of Protestant England, the friar was a figure of fun, or of evil. But who can say?

The box office is unimpressive for a premiere, suggesting that London's theatregoers are not very excited about plays about friars.

What's next?

There will be no entry tomorrow, for reasons unknown. Henslowe's Diary ... as a Blog! will thus return on 2 November. See you then!

FURTHER READING

Friar Spendleton information

• Martin Wiggins, British Drama, 1533-1642: A Catalogue, vol. 3 (Oxford University Press, 2013), entry 1046.
• Christopher Matusiak and Roslyn L. Knutson, "Friar Spendleton", Lost Plays Database (2019), accessed August 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?

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

30 June, 1597 - The Life and Death of Martin Schwartz

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

Henslowe writes: 30 | ne | tt at liffe & death of martin swarte ... | 02 | 08

In modern English: 30^th [June, 1597] ... new ... total at Life and Death of Martin Schwartz ... £2 and 8 shillings [i.e. 48 shillings]

Today, the Admiral's Men performed a new play! The Life and Death of Martin Schwartz is now lost, but its title tells us that it was an historical tragedy about a German mercenary who fought for Lambert Simnel, a pretender to the English crown. From the information available to us, it is possible to speculate that this was yet another charismatic warrior role for Edward Alleyn. 

The life

The Siege of Neuss, where Martin
Schwartz made his name

In his entry on Martin Schwartz in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Ian Arthurson quotes Swiss sources on his early life. Schwartz was a shoemaker's son who became a soldier, distinguishing himself at the Siege of Neuss in 1475. He became an officer under King Maximilian I and was known to be bold, pitiless, a great drinker, and fond of flashy jewelry, for which he was mocked by the king's jester.

Meanwhile, in England, the seemingly endless Wars of the Roses were grinding to their conclusion. At the Battle of Bosworth Field, the Yorkist King Richard III was  killed, and the victorious Henry Tudor was crowned King Henry VII. 

But there was in one final twist before the wars could end. A priest had spotted a boy named Lambert Simnel who bore a passing resemblance to young Edward, Duke of Warwick, who had a better claim to the throne than Henry but was imprisoned in the Tower of London. The Yorkists trained Simnel in courtly manners and promoted him as the rightful king of England. The Earl of Lincoln raised an army to overthrow Henry and install young 'Edward VI' on the throne; he was probably using the 10-year old Simnel as a stepping stone to taking the crown for himself. 

Margaret, the future
Duchess of Burgundy:
a 1468 portrait

The Yorkist army was aided financially by Richard III's sister, Margaret of Burgundy, who recruited German and Swiss mercenaries. Among them was a troop of Swiss pikemen led by Martin Schwartz.  The rebels mustered in Ireland and then crossed the sea to land in Lancashire and march on London.

Things came to a head in Nottinghamshire at the Battle of Stoke Field. Schwartz's role in the battle is briefly mentioned in Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles (1587) which tells us that there were "two thousand Almains [i.e. Germans], with one Martine Sward, a valiant and noble captain to lead them".  Holinshed writes that "both the armies joined and fought very earnestly" and the Germans, "being tried and expert men of war, were in all things, as well in strength as policy, equals and matches to the Englishmen". And he praises Schwartz: "few of the Englishmen, either in valiant courage, or strength, and nimbleness of body was to him comparable".

Despite this, Henry's forces prevailed. Arthurson cites English and Swiss accounts which record that Schwartz felt betrayed, having been misled about the degree of support in England for the Yorkist rebellion. But he fought on to the death. Holinshed praises the spirit of the defeated army:

When this battle was ended, and fought out to the extremity, then it well appeared, what high prowess, what manful stomachs, what hardy and courageous hearts rested in the King's adversaries. For there the chief captains, the Earl of Lincoln, and the lord Lovell, Sir Thomas Broughton, Martine Sward, and the lord Gerardine, captain of the Irishmen, were slain, and found dead in the very places which they had chosen alive to fight in, not giving one foot of ground to their adversaries.  

A modern memorial to the
dead of the battle in East
Stoke, Nottinghamshire.
© WMR-35

The ultimate outcome was that the Yorkists lost, Henry VII remained king, and young Lambert Simnel was forgiven and became a kitchen boy at the royal court. There is a modern memorial to the dead, including Schwartz, in the graveyard of St Oswald's Church in East Stoke.

 The legend

It seems that Schwartz was more famous in Elizabethan England than he is today; indeed, there appears to have been a song about him. John Skelton's poem "Against a Comely Custron" (1527) mocks a kitchen-boy by comparing him to Lambert Simnel; it includes the lines:

With, hey, trolly, lolly, lo, whip here, Jack,
Alumbek sodildim sillorim ben!
Curiously he can both counter and knack
Of Martin Swart and all his merry men.

And in William Wager's 1560s play The Longer Thou Livest the More Fool Thou Art, the fool Moros sings the lines,

Martin Swart and his man, sodledum, sodledum,
Martin Swart and his man, sodledum, soledum bell.

Schwartz was still remembered in the 1630s. In John Ford's play Perkin Warbeck, about another pretender to the throne, the rebels recall the fates of Simnel's supporters, and they list the commanders who died for him, including "Bold Martin Swart".

A glimpse of Martin Schwartz in the TV series
The Shadow of the Tower (1972)

Schwartz has since been forgotten, though; he appears briefly in the 1972 BBC TV series The Shadow of the Tower, but he gets only one line (it is "Ha!").  

The play

From the fragments of information about Schwartz, it is possible to speculate on what an Elizabethan play about him might have been like.

We can imagine a play about a bold and glamorous soldier who rises from humble origins to become a respected warrior on the continent before getting mixed up in the Simnel rebellion. If so, this might have been an interesting take on the English history play, presenting it from the point of view of an outsider. 

The play must surely have been negative toward the Yorkist cause (since Henry VII was the ancestor of Queen Elizabeth), but perhaps it was Lincoln who was portrayed as the villain, while Schwartz came across as a brave but doomed soldier on the wrong side of history. 

We don't know if the play was really like that. But we do know that it made 48 shillings, an unimpressive debut for a new play. Even if Londoners could hum the Martin Schwartz song, they may not have been sufficiently interested to see a play about him.

FURTHER READING

The Life and Death of Martin Schwartz information

• Raphael Holinshed, Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (1587), vol. 
• Ian Arthurson, "Schwartz, Martin (d. 1487)," in The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004).
• Martin Wiggins, British Drama, 1533-1642: A Catalogue, vol. 3 (Oxford University Press, 2013), entry 953.
• Mark Hutchings, "Martin Swarte, His Life and Death", Lost Plays Database (2016), accessed June 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?

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

3 June, 1597 - Frederick and Basilea

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

Henslowe writes: 3 | ne | tt at frederycke & basellia ... | 02 | 02

In modern English: 3^rd [June, 1597] ... new ... total at Frederick and Basilea ... £2 and 2 shillings [i.e. 42 shillings]

Today, the Admiral's Men performed a new play! Frederick and Basilea is another lost play ... except not quite.

The title of Frederick and Basilea tells us nothing about the play, because there is no known story with characters of those names. But one element of the play survives in the form of a theatrical document known as a 'plot': that is, a list of entrances. The 'plot' doesn't tell us a great deal about the play itself, but it does tell us something about the inner workings of the Rose playhouse.

Only a few of the mysterious documents known as 'plots' survive, but it seems likely that every play performed in an English Renaissance playhouse would have had one created for use during performance. You can look at a facsimile of the 'plot' here. It is essentially a list of every entrance made by the characters during the play. Here is a short section of it, very heavily modernized and reformatted for readability:

Enter Frederick, Basilea (Richard Allen, Dick). To them, King (Mr Juby). To them, Messenger (Black Dick). To them, Sebastian, Heraclius, Theodore, Pedro, Philippo, Andreo, Thamar (Mr Allen, Sam, Mr Martyn, Leadbetter, Dutton, Pigg). To them, Leonora (Pigg). 

Enter Frederick, Basilea (Richard Allen, Dick). To them Philippo (Dutton). To her, King, Frederick (Mr Juby, Richard Allen). 

Enter Myrton-Hamec, Sebastian, Pedro, Lords (Thomas Towne, Mr Alleyn, Ledbetter), Attendants. 

Enter King, Theodore, Frederick (Mr Juby, Mr Martyn, Richard Allen). To them, Philippo, Basilea (Edward Dutton, his boy), Guard (Thomas Hunt, gatherers). To them, Messenger (Black Dick). To them, Sebastian, Myron-Hamec, Leonora, Pedro, Andreo (Mr Alleyn, Thomas Towne, Will, Ledbetter, Pigg), Guard (gatherers). 

And so on.  What is the purpose of such a document? In Documents of Performance in Early Modern England, Tiffany Stern reconstructs how performances were facilitated by 'plots'. Each actor memorized his 'part', that is, his characters lines and their cues which needed to be memorized. There was a prompter standing close to the doors, following the script, ready to help out anyone who dropped a line. And the 'plot' was there to help actors remember which scenes they were in and when they needed to get ready. Each of the surviving 'plots' has a hole in the top indicating that it was hung up on a hook backstage during performances. 

Detail from The Reception of the Ambassadors
in Damascus (anonymous, 1511)

Unfortunately, the 'plot' tells us little about the story. All we can say is that there were Europeans and Moors in it, some of royal status. A character called Theodore acts as some kind of emissary between Leonora and the Moors. Nothing else is clear.

But the 'plot' does give us a glimpse of the actors who performed the plays in Henslowe's Diary. 'Mr Alleyn' is Edward Alleyn, the leading actor of the company; he is playing a character called Sebastian. Richard Allen was no relation. 'Mr Martyn' may be Martin Slater, of whom we will hear more in a few weeks: remember his name! Edward Juby was an important figure in the company and is mentioned in many Henslowe documents. 'Sam' is Samuel Rowley, a playwright as well as an actor. Various boys  play the female roles, including Dick and 'Pigg' (John Pigge). And there are adult actors who aren't dignified with first names and may have been 'hired men' (who were not sharers in the company's profits): Leadbetter, Dutton, and 'Black Dick', who may have been the young Richard Perkins, who went on to be a popular leading actor. 

This play stretched the company's limitations. There is a lot of doubling, with several actors playing multiples characters. And the 'plot' also reveals what the company did when a play required a lot of non-speaking characters onstage: they dragged on the 'gatherers', that is, the people responsible for collecting the money.

So, although its 'plot' teaches us very little about the play of Frederick and Basilea, we do learn a lot about the backstage personalities and activities in the Rose. Meanwhile, in the counting room, Henslowe can see that today was not a very successful premiere, with the playhouse just over half full. 

 

FURTHER READING

Frederick and Basilea information

• Carol Chillington Rutter, Documents of the Rose Playhouse (Manchester University Press, 1984), 111-13.
• David Mateer, "Edward Alleyn, Richard Perkins and the Rivalry Between the Swan and the Rose playhouses". Review of English Studies 243 (2009): 61-77.
• Martin Wiggins, British Drama, 1533-1642: A Catalogue, vol. 3 (Oxford University Press, 2013), entry 1078.
• David McInnis, "Frederick and Basilea", Lost Plays Database (2015), accessed June 2021.

Information on 'plots'

• Tiffany Stern, Documents of Performance in Early Modern England (Cambridge University Press, 2009), 201-31

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!

26 May, 1597 - The Life and Death of Harry I

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

Henslowe writes: 26 | ne | ... tt at harey the firste life & deth ... 02 | 10

In modern English: 26^th [May, 1597] ... New ... total at Harry I, Life and Death ... £2 and 10 shillings [i.e. 50 shillings]

Today, the Admiral's Men premiered a new play! Unfortunately, The Life and Death of Harry I is lost, but its title tells us very clearly that it was a biographical history play about Henry I, the twelfth century king of England. 

The reign of Henry I was long and complicated (and almost everyone involved in it was named William, Robert or Matilda), so it is hard to know exactly which events were portrayed in this play. However, if one cuts through the details, it is possible to see how Henry's story could have made for a play that might have appealed to the Rose audience.  

The life

King Henry I depicted in The Book
of the Laws of Ancient Kings (1321)

Henry came to the throne in a contentious manner when King William II died unexpectedly in a hunting accident. Even though Henry was the youngest of William's brothers, he persuaded the lords to crown him king because his older brother, Robert, was far away on a crusade in the Holy Land. Robert was not pleased and returned to claim the English throne. Basing himself in his duchy of Normandy, he attempted an invasion, and the brothers entered into a long contest of wars and negotiations. Robert's story came to an end when Henry invaded his duchy of Normandy and imprisoned him. 

The Battle of Brémule depicted in the Grandes
Chroniques de France (late 1370s)

Further wars ensued when the King of France, Louis VI (known as Louis the Fat), attempted to take Normandy; the various conflicts included the Battle of Brémule, in which Henry led a victorious army against the French.

Henry also fought the Welsh on the English marches and led an army into Wales, forcing its rulers to sue for peace. However, these events may not have been in the play. In his catalogue of British drama, Martin Wiggins points out that next year the company will perform another play about Henry entitled The Famous Wars of Henry I and the Prince of Wales. This implies that the present play did not cover the Welsh campaign. 

Either way, this summary suggests that Henry could have been played on the stage as a triumphant warrior king; if so, he would have been a perfect role for the company's leading actor, Edward Alleyn, who specialized in these kinds of roles. 

The death

The shipwreck that killed young William and
Matilda, depicted in The Book of the
Laws of Ancient Kings (1321)

The Life and Death of Henry I probably ended in tragedy, however. Henry's son William was confirmed as Duke of Normandy, but he returned to England on The White Ship, which capsized; young William drowned trying to rescue his sister Matilda. Henry was left without an heir.

The title tells that the play included Henry's death. This is surprising, since his end was ignominious. Henry famously died from eating "a surfeit of lampreys", that is, too many portions of this tasty fish. As he lacked a clear successor, Henry's death plunged England into anarchy. 

Drawing a crowd

In her entry on Harry I for the Lost Plays Database, Roslyn L. Knutson points out that Belin Dun, the company's much-performed lost play about a highwayman, is set during the reign of Henry I. Indeed, the two men were linked in a lost ballad recorded in 1594 (the year Belin Dun was premiered), entitled The Famous Chronicle of Henry the First, with the Life and Death of Belin Dun, the First Thief that ever was Hanged in England. Perhaps Henry appeared in the play of Belin Dun; could its recent return to the stage have been a way of raising excitement about the upcoming Harry I?

Whatever the exact content of The Life and Death of Harry I, today's box office is positive; the Rose is not full, but a very large audience has arrived. The prospect of a new English history play seems to have been very attractive to Londoners.

FURTHER READING

The Life and Death of Harry I information

• Andrew Gurr, Shakespeare's Opposites: The Admiral's Company, 1594-1625 (Cambridge University Press, 2009), 229.
• Roslyn L. Knutson, "Henry I, Life and Death of", Lost Plays Database (2019), accessed May 2021. 
• Martin Wiggins, British Drama, 1533-1642: A Catalogue, vol. 3 (Oxford University Press, 2013), entry 1075.

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!

11 May, 1597 - A Humorous Day's Mirth

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

Henslowe writes: 11 | ne |  tt at the comodey of vmers... 02 | 03

In modern English: 11^th [May, 1597] ... total at The Comedy of Humours ... £2 and 3 shillings [i.e. 43 shillings]

Today, the Admiral's Men premiered a new play! And in a very unusual turn of events, this play has survived the passage of time and can still be read today, albeit under a different title.

George Chapman, from a
1616 edition of his
translation of Homer.

Although Henslowe calls it The Comedy of Humours, today's play is almost certainly the same one that will be published in 1599 under the title A Humorous Day's Mirth. The evidence can be found in Henslowe's 1598 inventory of costumes, which includes "Verone's son's hose" and "Labesha's cloak with gold buttons", referring to two of the characters in A Humorous Day's Mirth. In Henslowe's list of performances, The Comedy of Humours is the only title that fits the play well.

A Humorous Day's Mirth was written by George Chapman, whom we met last year as the author of the wildly popular comedy of disguises, The Blind Beggar of Alexandria. For his follow-up, Chapman has provided another wacky farce, which this time belongs to the genre known as 'humours comedy'. 

What is humours comedy?

The four temperaments, illustrated in a
15th-century German calendar. Clockwise
from left: phlegmatic, sanguine, choleric
and melancholic.

Confusingly enough, in Elizabethan times, the word 'humour' did not refer to comedy. Medical theory at the time held that the human body was affected by four fluids, known as humours, namely, blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile. If one of the humours was present in greater amounts than the others, it could affect a person's temperament, making them sanguine, phlegmatic, choleric, or melancholic.

The word 'humour' thus came to mean an eccentric character trait; hence, as Ben Jonson explains at the beginning of his comedy Every Man Out of his Humour:

   When some one peculiar quality

Doth so possess a man that it doth draw

All his affects, his spirits, and his powers

In their confluxions all to run one way,

This may truly said to be a 'humour'.

A 'humours comedy' is thus a play in which the characters are dominated by peculiar characteristics. It is possible that Chapman actually invented the genre with today's play. It will be followed by Ben Jonson's Every Man in his Humour and Every Man Out of his Humour. And humours are mentioned  on the title pages of many plays of this period, including Shakespeare's: The First Part of Henry IV advertises "the humorous conceits of Sir John Falstaff" and The Merry Wives of Windsor announces the characters' "sundry variable and pleasing humours".  

The play

Set in Paris (but a Paris that feels exactly like Elizabethan England), A Humorous Day's Mirth showcases a variety of humorous characters. It is difficult to describe the plot because there is no central storyline; the play is better thought of as a a jumble of subplots, some quite vague in their execution. 

The figure around which everything revolves is Lemot, whose own humour is his desire to laugh at other people. Lemot acts as a kind of onstage ringmaster, provoking the play's characters into displaying their humours and then commenting on them. When his friend Colinet excitedly says, "we may chance to have a fair day, for we shall spend it with so humorous acquaintance as rains nothing but humour all their lifetime", Lemot announces that he will preside over the affairs "like an old king in an old-fashion play" and will "sit, as it were, and point out all my humorous companions" (scene 2).

Jan Steen, Leaving the Tavern (late 17th century)

So he does. And really, that's all you need to know. Various characters are introduced with eccentric humours. Lemot provokes some storylines in which characters fall in love or become romantically jealous. Some of them have clear story arcs that come to a resolution in the end, while others feel more like short comic sketches. The play as a whole is more akin to a variety show than a straightforward narrative. 

At the end of the play, the characters all end up at an ordinary (a kind of inn). And there, Lemot acts as a master of ceremonies at a lottery, presenting posies (little poems) that tell the truth about each of the characters. Finally, the King announces the conclusion.

And here I solemnly invite you all

Home to my court, where with feats we will crown

This mirthful day, and vow it to renown. (Scene 13)

If you would like to read A Humorous Day's Mirth, there are two modern-spelling editions available: Eleanor Lowe's online edition at Digital Renaissance Editions, and Charles Edelman's for the Revels Plays series.

The humourous characters

What's amusing about A Humorous Day's Mirth is not its story but rather its characters and the humours that they display. Let's look at a few of them.

A classic image of a
melancholic, from
Robert Burton's Anatomy
of Melancholy (1622)

One of the most popular humours in this genre is melancholia, the state of depression that supposedly arose from an excess of black bile. Melancholics were gloomy, antisocial, and disgusted by the world, and were stereotypically portrayed with folded arms and with their hats pulled over their eyes, to illustrate their introverted withdrawal from society.

One of the melancholics in A Humorous Day's Mirth is Dowsecar, whom the other characters find entertaining to watch. In one scene, they gather to observe him encounter a series of objects placed there to try to cure him: a sword (an emblem of warlike bravery), hose and a codpiece (the clothes of a fashionable young man), and a painting of a woman. But Dowesecar rejects them all. When his father tries to persuade him to marry and have children, Dowsecar replies he would be of more value to the world if he simply died, so that his corpse could nourish the grass that feeds the cattle in the field. He gloomily concludes that "Wealth is the only father and the child, / And but in wealth no man has any joy". Everyone thinks he's mad except the King, who thinks that on the contrary, Dowsecar has "perfect judgement" (scene 7). 

But one of the recurring jokes of this play is that humours are not as fundamental to the characters' personalities as they may seem, and are often revealed to be affectations that can can be banished by such things as the power of love. Among the observers of Dowsecar is the beautiful Martia. When Dowsecar sees her, he falls instantly in love, crying "am I burnt to dust / With a new sun", and realizes that his melancholia was not his true self (scene 7). 

Martia herself is pledged to marry another humorous figure, Labesha. His humour is his extreme gullibility which him easy to fool, rather like Shakespeare's Andrew Aguecheek in Twelfth Night. But when he loses Martia to Dowecar, Labesha takes on the humour of melancholia himself, affecting to be a misanthrope at war with the world: "I will in silence live a man forlorn, / Mad, and melancholy as a cat". The other characters test his new humour by placing a cream cake in front of him. He rails upon it in an absurd parody of melancholic posturing:

O sour cream! What thinkest thou, that I love thee still? ... If thou haddest strawberries and sugar in thee - but it may be thou art set with stale cake to choke me! Well, taste it, and try it, spoonful by spoonful. [Tries the cake.] Bitterer and bitterer still! But O, sour cream, wert thou an onion, since Fortune set thee for me, I will eat thee, and I will devour thee in spite of Fortune's spite.

Choke I or burst I, mistress, for thy sake,

To end my life, eat I this cream and cake. (scene 10)

Other humours are on display too. The old man Labervele is obsessively jealous of his young wife, Florilla. And Florilla herself is a religious puritan: on her first entrance, she realizes that she is wearing too many clothes for the warm weather:

What have I done? Put on too many clothes?

The day is hot, and I am hotter clad

Than might suffice health.

My conscience tells me that I have offended

And I'll put them off.

But then she fears that doing so would waste time that could be spent on godly things:

That will ask time that might be better spent;

One sin will draw another quickly so.

See how the devil tempts! (scene 4)

Failed Puritans in a woodcut from the ballad
The Beggar's Delight (late 17th century)

Labervele worries that if his wife encounters a young man, her blood will cause her piety to disappear. He is correct; once again, humours cannot be trusted, because her religious humour is an act that she performs to keep her distance from the old man. Lemot affects to 'test' her for the old man by wooing her, and although she rebuffs him in her husband's presence, she attempts a liaison with Lemot later. But he sends her back to her husband. 

These are the kinds of things that happen in A Humorous Day's Mirth. They don't all come across as very funny on the page, but the talented actors at the Rose must have been able to bring out the comic energy that resides within them. 

Responses

We are fortunate to have a very rare thing for A Humorous Day's Mirth: an eye-witness report. John Chamberlain was a courtier whose letters to his friend Dudley Carleton contain all sorts of fascinating information about the age. On 11 June, Chamberlain wrote about seeing the play at the Rose. He was not impressed:

We have here [in London] a new play of humours in very great request, and I was drawn along to it by the common applause, but my opinion of it is (as the fellow said of the shearing of hogs) that there was a great cry for so little wool. 

Chamberlain may not have liked the play, but his letter mentions that he was drawn by its great popularity. It seems that everyone in London was talking about A Humorous Day's Mirth. Although today's box office is not at all impressive for a premiere, things are going to change.

What we learn from this

What we learn from A Humorous Day's Mirth is that genres that seem baffling today could be massively popular in Elizabethan London. To a modern reader, the play seems a disjointed muddle of silly comic sketches, not a patch on the elegant comedies that Shakespeare was producing across the river. But Chapman's play will prove a tremendous success and will spawn many imitations. 

The title page of the 1599
publication of the play

The other thing we learn is that the printed text of a play may not always reflect what was seen on the stage. A Humorous Day's Mirth feels inelegant on the page because the 1599 printed text is a mess; its stage directions and speech prefixes are muddled, there are confusing plot holes and characters who fade away, and the printer turned all the verse speeches into prose.

One theory is that the text was printed from an early draft of the play, and that the finished version for the Rose may have been more coherent. The modern-spelling editions by Eleanor Lowe and Charles Edelman have done an excellent job of making the play more readable and restoring its poetic verse to the way it should be. As Edelman says in his introduction, "one of the aims of this edition is to show that, in the hands of a talented cast, it could prove a very humorous night's mirth in the theatre".

FURTHER READING

A Humorous Day's Mirth information

• John Chamberlain, The Letters of John Chamberlain, ed. Norman Egbert McClure (American Philosophical Society, 1939), 1:32.
• Charles Edelman, ed. An Humorous Day's Mirth (Manchester University Press, 2010)
• Martin Wiggins, British Drama, 1533-1642: A Catalogue, vol. 3 (Oxford University Press, 2013), entry 1073.
• Eleanor Lowe, ed., "An Humorous Day's Mirth." Digital Renaissance Editions
• Tom Rutter, Shakespeare and the Admiral's Men (Cambridge University Press, 2017), 130-64.

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!

29 April, 1597 - Uther Pendragon

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

Henslowe writes: 29 | ne | tt at vterpendragon ... | 02 | 14

In modern English: 29^th [April, 1597] ... new ... total at Uther Pendragon ... £2 and 14 shillings [i.e. 54 shillings]

Today, the Admiral's Men introduced a new play! Like so much of their repertory, Uther Pendragon is lost, but this time its title clearly indicates its subject matter: the legend of the father of King Arthur. No doubt Merlin the magician appeared in this play, since Henslowe's 1598 inventory of costumes lists a "Merlin gown and cape".

Uther Pendragon from a 1255
manuscript copy of Matthew
Paris's Epitome of Chronicles 

There must be a connection with another play that the Admiral's Men were performing until recently, Vortigern. As we have seen, that play was about the eponymous Briton warlord who killed and usurped King Constantius, forcing his brothers, Aurelius and Uther, to flee. So it seems likely that Uther Pendragon was a sequel about their return. 

The legends of Uther

In the legends of British history, the brothers Aurelius and Uther return to Britain to reclaim the throne following Vortigern's death; as the eldest, Aurelius is crowned. The author of Uther Pendragon could have found the story in many sources, but the most famous is Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of the Kings of Britain (1136).

Geoffrey tells many tales about Uther. In one of them (perhaps a little difficult to stage), he helps Merlin to bring stones from Ireland to build Stonehenge. Another is about his accession to the throne: Uther sees a comet in the shape of a dragon and Merlin regards this as a sign of his glorious future; sure enough, he wins a battle and thus takes on the name 'Pendragon'. Aurelius is then assassinated and Uther becomes King. 

Uther Pendragon and Merlin, from British
Library manuscript Royal 20 A II
(early 14th century)

Another famous legend concerns Uther and Igerna (better known today as Igraine), the wife of Gorlois, Duke of Cornwall. Uther falls in love with her at a feast. Gorlois keeps Igerna within the fortress of Tintagel, but Uther secures the magical aid of Merlin, who enables him to assume the appearance of Gorlois, enter the castle and have sex with her. Subsequently, Gorlois is killed and Uther marries her; their son is Arthur. Merlin takes the baby away, and he is raised away from the court.

The end of Uther's story is spectacular too. Civil war breaks out in Britain and, despite being ill, Uther has himself carried on a litter to lead his troops to victory at Verulam (St Albans), after which he dies.

Uther in Elizabethan London

These stories were popular in Elizabethan England. In his study of Arthurian drama, Paul Whitfield White notes that Shakespeare's First Part of Henry VI (staged at the Rose a few years ago) includes a reference to "that stout Pendragon", who "in his litter sick, / Came to the field and vanquishèd his foes" (Act 3, scene 5).

George Clifford in tilting attire;
portrait by Nicholas Hilliard (c.1590)

What is more, thousands of Londoners would have seen Uther and Merlin during the annual Accession Day tilts (jousting competitions) in November. White explains that the Queen's official champion, George Clifford, Earl of Cumberland, would arrive dressed as Uther Pendragon, an allusion to his family seat at Pendragon Castle in Cumbria and to his family crest of the red dragon. A stage castle was erected in the tiltyard and an actor playing Merlin recited a prophecy about a red and a white dragon (which we learned about in the entry on Vortigern); Merlin's vision of the future was then staged as Arthur and his knights emerged from the castle. Perhaps the play was in part a tribute to Clifford,  who had a link to the Admiral's Men: a brilliant naval officer, he had fought the Spanish alongside the company's patron, the Lord Admiral Charles Howard. 

The play

We don't know which of these legends appeared in Uther Pendragon. However, it's possible to glimpse what it might have been like by looking at a later play, William Rowley's The Birth of Merlin (1622). The play is primarily about Uther's older brother Aurelius and his manipulation by a wicked Saxon princess, but it does depict Uther going to fight Vortigern and the comet that prophesies his triumph:

Blazing star appears. 

UTHER. Look, Edol:

Still this fiery exalation shoots

His frightful horrors on th'amazed world;

See, in the beam that's 'bout his flaming ring,

A dragons head appears, from out whose mouth

Two flaming flakes of fire stretch east and west.

EDOL. And see, from forth the body of the star

Seven smaller blazing streams directly point

On this affrighted kingdom.

The Birth of Merlin ends with Uther ascending the throne and Merlin creating a spectacular vision of the life and death of his future son, King Arthur:

Merlin strikes. Hoeboys. Enter a king in armour, his shield quartered with thirteen crowns. At the other door enter divers princes who present their crowns to him at his feet, and do him homage; then enters Death and strikes him; he, growing sick, crowns Constantine. Exeunt.

Perhaps today's play had similar kinds of theatrical spectacle. 

Whatever happened in the play of Uther Pendragon, today's box office is very encouraging. The last two premieres have been disappointing, but this one has drawn a much bigger crowd, almost filling the Rose. Things may be returning to the way they used to be.

FURTHER READING

Uther Pendragon information

• Andrew Gurr, Shakespeare's Opposites: The Admiral's Company, 1594-1625 (Cambridge University Press, 2009), 228.
• Martin Wiggins, British Drama, 1533-1642: A Catalogue, vol. 3 (Oxford University Press, 2013), entry 1070.
• Paul Whitfield White, "The Admiral's Lost Arthurian Plays," in Lost Plays in Shakespeare's England, edited by David McInnis and Matthew Steggle (Palgrave, 2014), 153-5.
• Roslyn L. Knutson, "Uther Pendragon", Lost Plays Database (2019), accessed April, 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?

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

18 April, 1597 - A French Comedy

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

Henslowe writes: 18 | ne | tt at a frenshe comedie ...  | 02 | 00

In modern English: 18^th [April, 1597] | New | Total at A French Comedy |  £2 [i.e. 40 shillings]

Antoine Watteau, Actors of the
Comédie-Française (1710s)

Today, the Admiral's Men premiered a new play! But A French Comedy is unfortunately lost. Confusingly enough, it has (almost) the same title as The French Comedy, a play that the company performed a few times back in 1595. I assume that this is a different play, as Henslowe marks it "ne" for "new".

As with the previous lost French comedy, we do not know what the content of this one was. No doubt it mocked the French, but in what way?

The play's debut is inauspicious, with an audience much smaller than what might be expected for a premiere.

FURTHER READING

A French Comedy information

• Andrew Gurr, Shakespeare's Opposites: The Admiral's Company, 1594-1625 (Cambridge University Press, 2009), 228.
• Rosyln L. Knutson, "French Comedy, A", Lost Plays Database (2019), accessed April, 2021. 
• Martin Wiggins, British Drama, 1533-1642: A Catalogue, vol. 3 (Oxford University Press, 2013), entry 1066.

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!

7 April, 1597 - Five Plays in One

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

Henslowe writes: 7 | ne | tt at v playes in one | 02 | 01

In modern English: 7^th [April, 1597] ... total at Five Plays in One ... £2 and 1 shilling [i.e. 41 shillings].

The number 5 in a
column of figures
in Henslowe's Diary

Today, the Admiral's Men performed a new play! Unfortunately, it is yet another lost play, and its title tells us very little indeed, except that it was probably a collection of one-act plays, perhaps linked by some kind of narrative device. 

We have already encountered a lost play of this kind at the Rose, back in 1592, entitled Four Plays in One. And one theory about the lost Seven Days of the Week, is that it too was an anthology show.  We know of other lost plays of this kind, too. Thomas Middleton's one-act Yorkshire Tragedy (1607) was once part of an otherwise lost Four Plays in One. The only text of this form to survive in full is Four Plays, or Moral Representations, in One, written around 1614 by John Fletcher and his collaborators. 

Rosyln L. Knutson's entry on Five Plays in One for the Lost Plays Database describes how early theatre historians were over-imaginative in assuming that the playlets were on Classical subjects. In truth, we know nothing at all about their subject matter. All we know is their number. 

In terms of box office, Five Plays in One has not had an auspicious debut: the audience is small for a premiere, and it will need good word of mouth to be a success. 

FURTHER READING

Five Plays in One information

• Rosyln L. Knutson, "Five Plays in One (Admiral's Men)", Lost Plays Database (2019), accessed April 2021. 
• Martin Wiggins, British Drama, 1533-1642: A Catalogue, vol. 3 (Oxford University Press, 2021), entry 1063.

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!

19 March, 1597 - Guido

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

Henslowe writes: 19 | ne | tt at gvido | 02 | 00 

In modern English: 19^th [March, 1597] ... New ... Total at Guido ... £2 [i.e. 40 shilings]

Today, the Admiral's Men performed a new play! Guido is, unfortunately, lost, and its subject matter is impossible to know, although interesting guesses can be made. 

Guido is a very common name in Italy, and it is thus very difficult to pin down a likely subject for this play. In his article for the Lost Plays Database, David McInnis lists numerous possibilities, but none seems more likely than any other.

However, there may be a clue in Henslowe's 1598 inventory of props, which includes "1 tomb of Guido". This suggests that a tomb was important enough to the story that a special prop needed to be built. In his catalogue of British drama, Martin Wiggins identifies two famous Guidos whose stories involve tombs.

Cenotaph of Guido Tarlati in Arezzo Cathedral

The first was Guido Tarlati, the Bishop of Arezzo and leader of the Ghibelline faction in the conflicts with the Guelphs in 14th-century Italy. He was excommunicated by Pope John XXII and a standoff occurred when he refused to let his successor as bishop enter Arezzo. His tomb in the cathedral is a spectacular creation, attributed to Giotto by Giorgio Vasari in Lives of the Artists. However, it is hard to see why the tomb would be needed as a prop if Guido was simply buried in it. 

Guido Cavalcanti
in a painting by
Cristofano dell'Altissimo 

Wiggin's second suggestion is a little more convincing. The 13th-century poet Guido Cavalcanti features in a story in Boccaccio's The Decameron (Day 6, Story 9), which portrays him as a philosopher who questions God's existence. While Guido meditates in a graveyard, a group of young men approach him and mock his atheism. He replies, "Gentlemen, in your own house you may say whatever you like to me," and then vaults over a tombstone and runs away. The young men are baffled until one of them explains the joke: Guido is saying they ought to live in a graveyard because they are as ignorant as the dead. It's not much of a story (indeed, not much of a joke), but conceivably it could have been one scene in a longer play about Guido's life as a poet amid the conflicts between the Guelphs and Ghibellines. Wiggins points out that there is precedent at the Rose for stories about Italian poets, as we have seen in Tasso's Melancholy. 

Whatever the play was about, Henslowe has been preparing it for a while. Another section of the diary records that last week, on the 7th March, he lent his son more than £4 to buy "silks and other things for Guido". And Guido himself seems to have had a special costume: listed in Henslowe's 1598 list of apparel is "1 cloth cloak of russet with copper lace, called Guido's cloak". 

All of this work has not produced any great success, however. The box office is only 40 shillings, well below what one might expect of a premiere. The prospect of a new play about Guido, whoever he was, is not enough to attract punters in great numbers. 

What's next?

There will be no blog entry tomorrow because 20 March was a Sunday in 1597 and the players did not perform. Henslowe's Diary ... as a Blog! will thus return on the 21st. See you then!

FURTHER READING

Guido information

• Giovanni Boccaccio, The Decameron (1353), translated by G.H. McWilliam, 2nd edtn. (Penguin, 1995), 466-8
• Giorgio Vasari, "Giotto", in The Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors and Architects (1568), translated by Gaston C. du Vere (Macmillan, 1912). 
• David McInnis, "Guido", Lost Plays Database (2011), accessed March 2021. 
• Martin Wiggins, British Drama, 1533-1642: A Catalogue, vol. 3 (Oxford University Press, 2013), entry 1062.

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!

27 January, 1597 - A Woman Hard to Please

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

Henslowe writes: 27 | ne | tt at womane hard to please ... | 2 | 11 

In modern English: 27^th [January, 1597] ... new ... total at Woman Hard to Please ... £2 and 11 shillings [i.e. 51 shillings]

Today, the Admiral's Men staged a new play! Unfortunately, A Woman Hard to Please is yet another lost play about which we know nothing.

A woman looks deeply unimpressed by her
rescuer in Paolo Uccello's St George and
the Dragon (c.1470)

With only the title available to us, it is difficult to speculate on what happened in this play, although perhaps the eponymous woman was pleased at the end in some kind of comic resolution.  

We may be reminded that not too long ago, the Admiral's Men were performing A Toy to Please Chaste Ladies. Despite its title, that play typically received very poor box office and thus seems to have pleased no-one, chaste ladies or otherwise; it has not been seen since November. One cannot help wondering whether the title of today's play is some kind of riposte. 

As for the actors, they will not be entirely pleased with the response to this play, as the Rose is busy but not full.

FURTHER READING

A Woman Hard to Please information

• Martin Wiggins, British Drama, 1533-1642: A Catalogue, vol. 3 (Oxford University Press, 2013), entry 1056
• Roslyn L. Knutson, "Woman Hard to Please, A", Lost Plays Database (2019), accessed January, 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?

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

14 January, 1597 - Alexander and Lodowick

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

Henslowe writes: y^e 14 of Janewary 1597 ... ne ... R at elexsander & lodwicke ... lv^s 

In modern English: 14^th January, 1597 .. New ... Received at Alexander and Lodowick ... 55 shillings

Today, the Admiral's Men performed a new play! Alexander and Lodowick was based on a well known story about two friends who swap places. Although the play itself is lost, two other versions allow us to speculate on its content.  

An old tale

If you are familiar with John Webster's 1613 tragedy The Duchess of Malfi, you might remember a curious moment in the first act in which the Duchess, assertively wooing her surprised steward Antonio, assuages his anxiety by joking that in bed she will, "Like the old tale in Alexander and Lodowick, / Lay a naked sword between us, keep us chaste". Perhaps Webster was remembering a scene from the play performed at the Rose.

A very generic illustration accompanying the
printed text of the ballad of The Two Faithful Friends

But the story of Alexander and Lodowick goes back further than this play. The unknown playwright probably found it in a popular collection of stories entitled The History of the Seven Wise Masters of Rome, which had been through several editions between 1493 and 1602.  A shorter and tidier version of the story can be found in a ballad, The Two Faithful Friends: The Pleasant History of Alexander and Lodowick (first published around 1630, but likely in existence for a long time beforehand); the play could have been based on the ballad, or vice versa. (If you would like to listen to the ballad being sung, you can, thanks to the English Broadside Ballad Archive!)

The story

The two possible sources allow us to speculate about what the Rose audience saw. The following description is based on the shorter version in the ballad, although I have noted one interesting difference between the two versions toward the end. 

Alexander, Prince of Hungary, and Lodowick, Prince of France, are at the court of the Emperor of Germany. The two young men are close friends and happen to look identical, but Alexander is the better fighter of the two. When Alexander wins the hand of the princess in a tournament, he gives her to Lodowick instead, knowing that Lodowick loves her, and having his own fiancée waiting for him back home in Hungary. 

But the evil Spanish prince Guido, disappointed at not winning the princess for himself, accuses her of being unchaste. To prove her virtue, Lodowick must fight Guido in a trial by combat. But since Alexander is the better fighter, the two adopt a cunning plan: Alexander will pretend to be Lodowick and will fight Guido for him.

There is a problem, though: Alexander is supposed to be returning home to marry his fiancée. Alexander  therefore proposes that Lodowick take his place at the wedding. Lodowick must not go too far, however: Alexander requests that "Although thou wed her as thy wife, / Yet know 'tis in my name; / Let her remain a virgin pure / I do request the same."

So, Lodowick travels to Hungary and performs Alexander's role at the wedding. In order to ensure that his friend's request is followed, he sets a naked sword between himself and the puzzled bride in bed, so as to to prevent any contact between them (this is the sequence that Webster remembered in The Duchess of Malfi).

The plan works out neatly, as Alexander defeats Guido and then returns to resume his rightful place in Hungary, while Lodowick returns to his own bride. But Alexander's wife, frustrated that she has not experienced "love's pastime" with her husband, has sought comfort in another lord, and the two poison Alexander, turning him into a leper so that he is banished from his country.

Marcus Geerhaerts (1561-1636),
Portrait of Two Brothers

Alexander learns that the only cure for his affliction is to bathe in the blood of a child. He travels to Lodowick's court in France and seeks help from his friend, who now has children. In the version of the tale in The Seven Wise Masters of Rome, Lodowick's love for his friend is so strong that he slits the throats of his twin sons and cures Alexander with their blood; happily, once the cure is effected, the two sons are magically restored to life with a thread of gold around their necks. The ballad, however, tones down Lodowick's infanticidal devotion to his friend: although he still bathes Alexander in child-blood, he uses bloodletting rather than murder to acquire it; despite his wife's horror at his actions, the children survive.

In both versions, the cured and angry Alexander returns home and executes his his wife and her lover. Happy ending! Or, as the ballad puts it, "Their griefs to joys converted were, / Their pleasures did transcend."

It is hard to tell whether this story would have been performed as an anguished psychological drama or as knockabout silliness. But whatever the tone, Alexander and Lodowick is a moderate success today: although it has not succeeded in filling the Rose to capacity, the crowd is still very large.

FURTHER READING

Alexander and Lodowick information

• The History of the Seven Wise Masters of Rome (1506).
• The Two Faithful Friends: The Pleasant History of Alexander and Lodowick (c.1630). English Broadside Ballad Archive, #20275
• Martin Wiggins, British Drama, 1533-1642: A Catalogue, vol. 3 (Oxford University Press, 2013), entry 1055.
• Roslyn L. Knutson, "Alexander and Lodowick", Lost Plays Database (2019). Accessed January, 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?

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

30 December, 1596 - That Will Be Shall Be

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

Henslowe writes: y^e 310 of desembȝ 1596 ... ne ... R at that wilbe shalbe ... l^s 

In modern English: 30^th December, 1596 ... New ... Received at That Will Be Shall Be ... 50 shillings

Today, the Admiral's Men premiered another new play, their fourth in as many weeks. Unfortunately, That Will Be Shall Be is lost and nothing is known about its content.

The title appears to refer to the unpredictability and inescapability of the future; the modern equivalent would be the song lyrics, "Que sera, sera, / Whatever will be will be", which is a good excuse for a bit of Doris Day:

But the saying goes back much further. Indeed, the Rose audience will have heard something very similar in the play of Doctor Faustus, last performed less than a fortnight ago; in the first scene, the protagonist sums up the doctrines of theology as, "Che serà, serà, / What will be, shall be".

Perhaps That Will Be Shall Be was a tragedy about a character doomed to an inescapable fate. But the tone of the title would seem better to suggest a comedy, and may be reminiscent of such Shakespearean titles as What You Will, As You Like It and Much Ado About Nothing. 

Whatever its content, That Will Be Shall Be has had a moderately successful premiere: the theatre is not full, but it is comfortably crowded.

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)

FURTHER READING

That Will Be Shall Be information

• Andrew Gurr, Shakespeare's Opposites: The Admiral's Company, 1594-1625 (Cambridge University Press, 2009), 94, 224-5
• Martin Wiggins, British Drama, 1533-1642: A Catalogue, vol. 3 (Oxford University Press, 2013), entry 1051
• Roslyn L. Knutson, "That Will Be Shall Be", Lost Plays Database (2020), accessed December 2020. 

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!