of 1582-4 between the Privy Council and the City makes no mention of the Master, and the Council are still pressing for the appointment of fit persons to consider and allow of plays by the City itself. In 1589, however, the Lord Mayor cited the Master's 'mislike' of the Martin Marprelate plays as a reason for suppressing them, and a step forward was probably taken by the appointment in the same year of a commission to 'allow' plays, consisting of the Master himself and of two assessors nominated by the Lord Mayor and the Archbishop of Canterbury. I find no later reference to these assessors and it may be that before long the Master succeeded in divesting himself of their assistance.[1] In any case, their functions did not go beyond the 'allowing' of the actual plays. The general licensing of companies and of play-houses remained with the Master, and by 1592 we find the City acknowledging their powerlessness to redress the 'inconvenience' of the stage without him and debating the advisability of approaching him with a bribe. Henslowe's Diary discloses the Master between 1592 and 1597 as regularly licensing both theatres and plays, and taking fees, which appear to have amounted to 7s. for each new play produced, and 5s., 6s. 8d., and ultimately 10s. for each week during which a theatre was open.[2] To some extent the assumption of a more direct control by the Privy Council in 1597 must have limited his responsibility. But he continued to act as the agent of the Privy Council or the Lord Chamberlain in transmitting inhibitions and other orders to the companies.[3] Bonds had still to be given to him for the due observance of the regulations.[4] And
- [Footnote: *bury payment, omitted by Murray, in 1569-70, to 'Syr Thomas Bernars
[? Benger's] players, Master of the Quenes Majesties Revells'. But this was before the Act of 1572.]*
- ↑ Possibly the Southwark order for tithes from players, taken before 'my lords of Canterbury and London and the Master of the Revels' about 1600, implies some continuance of the commission. The issue of licences, both for the performance and after 1607 for the printing of plays, 'under the hand of' the Master (cf. ch. xxii), does not exclude the possibility of his acting on the report of an expert assessor, and one is tempted to conjecture that this may have been the position of Segar, who sometimes licensed for the press as deputy to Buck. But it is clear from passages in Sir Henry Herbert's office-book (Variorum, iii. 229-42) that he at least personally read the 'books' of plays.
- ↑ Henslowe, ii. 113, where Dr. Greg inter alia disposes of Mr. Fleay's theory that some of the fees entered in the Diary are for licences authorizing the publication, not the performance, of plays.
- ↑ Cf. App. D, No. cliv.
- ↑ The intruding company of 1598 had not been 'bound' to the Master. The Master's licence to Worcester's men in 1583 is described as an 'indenture of lycense', and the players were 'bound to the orders prescribed by the said Edmund Tyllneye'. On 2 Jan. 1595 Henslowe paid
