III
THE REVELS OFFICE
[Sixteenth-century material is collected by A. Feuillerat, Documents
relating to the Office of the Revels in the Time of Queen Elizabeth (1908,
Materialien, xxi), and Documents relating to the Office of Revels in the Time
of Edward VI and Mary (1914, Materialien, xliv), which replace the
extracts from Sir Thomas Cawarden's papers in A. J. Kempe, The Loseley
Manuscripts (1835), and the report by J. C. Jeaffreson in Hist. MSS.
vii. 596 (1879), the Audit Office records in P. Cunningham, Extracts from
the Accounts of the Revels at Court (1842), and Sir Henry Herbert's copies
of official papers in J. O. Halliwell-Phillipps, A Collection of Ancient
Documents respecting the Office of Master of the Revels (1870, cited from its
running title as Dramatic Records). A study of the documents is contained
in A. Feuillerat, Le Bureau des Menus-Plaisirs et la Mise en Scène à la
Cour d'Elizabeth (1910). Much of my own Notes on the History of the
Revels Office under the Tudors (1906) is incorporated in the present chapter.
Cunningham's book is still useful for the seventeenth century; the
authenticity of some of his documents is discussed in Appendix B. Of
earlier historians of the stage, George Chalmers, Apology for the Believers
in the Shakespeare-Papers (1797), deals most fully with the Revels Office;
it is matter for regret that Sir George Buck's 'particular commentary'
of the 'Art of Revels' has disappeared. In his Supplementary Apology
(1799) Chalmers made many extracts from the office books, now apparently
lost, of Sir Henry Herbert (1623-73). Others had already been published
by Malone (Variorum, iii). These have now been collected with other
material, including the later documents from Dramatic Records, in J. Q.
Adams, The Dramatic Records of Sir Henry Herbert (1917, cited as Herbert).]
One of the 'standing' offices which, from the general oversight exercised over them by the Lord Chamberlain, may also be regarded as 'offices outward of the Chamber' was the Revels Office. This, in its fullest establishment, consisted of a Master, a Clerk Comptroller, and a Clerk, whose services it shared with the analogous Office of Tents, a Yeoman, and a Groom. It was of Tudor origin. The first mention of a Master of Revels is in a Household order of 31 December 1494.[1] But the post appears to have been at this period a purely temporary one, conferred upon some existing officer of the Household, who had been selected to supervise and defray the expenses of the revels for a particular feast. Several of these ad hoc Masters are recorded at the court of Henry VIII; the most prominent was Sir Henry Guildford,
- ↑ Order for Sitting in the King's Great Chamber (H. O. 113): 'If the master of revells be there, he may sitt with the chapleyns or with the esquires or gentlemen ushers.'
