Perhaps the most exciting discovery for a REED editor is a document that not only identifies a company of performers, their patron, their fee, and the date of their performance, but also the play they performed. Most of these records lie in household accounts, which were kept by the steward of the gentry estate that hosted the performance. These were practical documents recording monies spent and, occasionally, distinguished guests, but without much interest in the content of the entertainment.
There are a few exceptions.
Wharton’s Men and The Dumb Knight at Brandsby Hall
On 21 January 1617/8, a local company under the patronage of Philip, Lord Wharton, of Healaugh Park Priory near Richmond, were paid 6s for their performance of Gervase Markham’s play The Dumb Knight (1608) for the entertainment of Richard Cholmeley and his guests at Brandsby Hall. If the annotation on the title page of the Bodleian Library’s copy is to be believed, The Dumb Knight was a collaborative effort between Markham and Lewis Machin.
Markham (c 1568–1637) is best known as a minor poet, primarily for his English Huswife (published 1615).
Less is known about Machin (fl. 1607–9), who may also have been responsible for Every Woman in her Humor (published 1609; see further Joseph Quincy Adams, ‘”Every Woman in Her Humor” and “The Dumb Knight”,’ Modern Philology 10.3 (1913): 413–432).
Quincy argues that the play was written for the Children of the King’s Revels; the title page of The Dumb Knight indicates that it was intended for the same company, although Lord Wharton’s company was not a children’s ensemble.
The Dumb Knight is an odd choice for a (presumably) small provincial playing company. It has twenty-three speaking parts and at least nine non-speaking ones. We do not know how many actors appeared in the January 1617/8 performance, but when the same company played at Londesborough Hall (East Riding) in 1600, the company numbered eight and their fee was 13s 8d. Their reward of 6s for The Dumb Knight, compared with the 13s 8d they received at Londesborough, would suggest a company of no more than four players. How then did they cover the twenty-three speaking parts of the play? Doubling would be the traditional solution but a survey of the text indicates that very little doubling is possible. Wharton’s Men may have co-opted some of Cholmeley’s domestic staff and guests might have participated, but the play presents no obvious solution to its casting problems.
Printed plays and local repertories:
The Simpson company at Gowthwaite Hall
The most interesting information on the repertoire of local companies lies in the answers given in the interrogations of William Harrison, the comedian of the Simpson company of Egton, and Thomas Pant, a member of the company. Pant, fifteen years old at the time of the Star Chamber prosecution, described entering into an apprenticeship agreement in shoemaking with the Simpsons only to discover that he was expected to be a member of the playing company. Harrison, then 35 years old, emphasized in his deposition that the company only played from printed texts, implying that the act of printing provided a sort of license for performance:
One of the plays acted and played… was Perocles, prince of Tire, and the other was Kinge Lere… these plaies which they so plaied were usuall playes And such as were acted in Common and publick places and staiges… and such as were played publiquely… and printed in the bookes. (STAC 8/19/10)
It is usually assumed that both Pericles and Lear refer to Shakespeare’s plays (published respectively in 1609 and 1608), but it is not impossible that the reference is to the anonymous King Leir of 1605 (see further Douglas H. Arrell, ‘”King Leir” at Gowthwaite Hall,’ Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England 25 (2012), pp 83–93).
Harrison noted in his deposition that the Simpson’s repertoire also included The Three Shirleys (printed 1607), which had been offered to Sir John on the occasion of their visit to Gowthwaite Hall, Nidderdale.
His choice, however, was the one play identified that has not survived, a St Christopher play based on the Golden Legend. Yorke’s choice was designed for his recusant audience for – as in Hamlet, the Simpson company could insert a ‘speech of some dozen or sixteen lines’ (act 2, scene 2, ll 517) – in which a Protestant minister is bested in argument by a Catholic priest and is carried off to hell.
Unnamed plays in performance:
The King’s Men at Brandsby Hall and
Lord Mounteagle’s Men at Newburgh Priory
Payments to professional companies under gentry or aristocratic patronage are common, but these only very rarely give information on the content of the entertainment. We can often link such payments to touring patterns: the King’s Men performed three plays at the Cholmeley estate of Brandsby Hall at Christmas of 1622 for a fee of 30s, but the record gives no indication of what plays were in their repertoire. Lord Mounteagle’s Men played at the Bellasis estate of Newburgh Priory in 1611. Documents from Lancashire and Cumberland show that they performed widely in the northwest that year, and it is probably that their appearance in the North Riding was part of the same touring pattern.
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