summer weeks, meant the reduction of establishments to the level of provincial profits, the breaking up of partnerships, the division of books and apparel, the dismissal of hired men.[1] But plague was inexorable. Reluctantly the drums and trumpets were bought, the last stoup was quaffed at the Cardinal's Hat, and the rufflers of London streets resigned themselves to the hard life of country 'strowlers'.[2] On the road, with his wagon, the actor necessarily laid aside the conditions of a householder, and reverted to those of his grandfather, the minstrel.[3] And it is fair to say that, as a rule, although there were Puritans in the provinces as well as in London, he received a minstrel's welcome. His advent, about 1574, to a western borough is thus described by one
- ↑ Strange's men petitioned c. 1592 (App. D, No. xcii), 'oure Companie is greate, and thearbie our chardge intollerable, in travellinge the Countrie, and the contynuance thereof wilbe a meane to bringe vs to division and seperacion'. My impression is that, when they did have to travel in 1592 or 1593, Pembroke's (cf. ch. xiii) budded off from them. Their own travelling warrant was for 6 men, but this does not exclude hirelings. The provincial records do not give much evidence as to the actual size of travelling companies. The strength of seven companies which visited Southampton in 1576-7 (Murray, ii. 396) ranged from 6 to 12. I incline to agree with Murray and W. J. Lawrence (T. L. S., 21 Aug. 1919) that the average may be put at about 10 for the latter part of the sixteenth century and that it grew in the seventeenth. A Lord Chamberlain's licence of 1621 (Murray, ii. 192) sets a limit of 18. Probably 10 men, duplicating parts, could play many of the London plays without alteration, but obviously not the more spectacular ones.
- ↑ Dekker, The Wonderfull Yeare (1603, Works, i. 100), 'The worst players Boy stood vpon his good parts, swearing tragicall and busking oathes, that how vilainously soeuer he randed, or what bad and vnlawfull action soeuer he entred into, he would in despite of his honest audience be halfe a sharer (at leaste) at home, or else strowle (thats to say trauell) with some notorious wicked floundring company abroad'; News from Hell (1606, Works, ii. 146), 'a companie of country players, . . . that with strowling were brought to deaths door'; Belman of London (1608, Works, iii. 81), 'Nor Players they bee, who out of an ambition to weare the best Ierkin (in a Strowling company) or to Act great Parts, forsake the stately and our more than Romaine Cittie Stages, to trauel vpon the hard hoofe from village to village for chees & butter-milke'; Lanthorne and Candlelight (1608, Works, iii. 255), 'Strowlers; a proper name given to country players that (without socks) trotte from towne to towne vpon the hard hoofe'; The Raven's Almanac (1609, Works, iv. 196), 'Players, by reason they shal have a hard winter, and must travell on the hoofe, will lye sucking there for pence and twopences, like young pigges at a sow newly farrowed'.
- ↑ 'Paid to the plaiers with the waggon' (Exeter, 1576-7); 'Misdemeanoure done in the towne vppon misusage of a wagon or coache of the Lo. Bartlettes [Berkeley's players' (Faversham, 1596-7); Dekker, Satiromastix, 1522, of Horace-Jonson, 'Thou hast forgot how thou amblest (in leather pilch) by a play-wagon, in the high way'; cf. ch. xi.
to the Theatre (ch. xvi); also the relations of the Admiral's and Strange's during 1589-94.
