make their account with the wise, to whom their performances were folly, and the 'unco' guid', to whom they were an offence.[1] Evidently they were not always discreet in their choice of themes. At Elbing in 1605 a company received a gratification of twenty thalers for a performance before the Council; and the record continues, '. . . daneben aber auch ihnen zu untersagen, dass sie nunmehr zu agiren aufhören sollen in Anmerkung, dass sie gestern in der Comödie schandbare Sachen fürgebracht.[2] Even princes sometimes got into trouble by encouraging these foreigners of doubtful respectability. There was glee in Cassel when Landgrave Maurice decided to disband the 'verfluchten' English in 1602. Possibly in this case it was the taxpayer rather than the Puritan who felt relief; but when the Duke of Pommern-Wolgast and his mother allowed the Schlosskirche at Lötz to be used for a performance in 1606 they brought upon themselves a shower of letters from Hofprediger Gregorius Hagius, which precisely re-echo the familiar English diatribes of Stephen Gosson and John Rainolds.[3] Presumably the whole business paid its way, or Browne would not have gone over four or five times or Spencer spent fifteen years in the country. A recent investigator, who has made a far more elaborate analysis of all the financial material than I have room for, calculates that, what with court salaries, and what with admission fees to public performances at the rate of about three kreuzers or less than a penny a head, an actor might hope to make on the average about £60 a year.[4] This was enough to live upon, even if, as was sometimes the case, wife and children accompanied the expedition. It seemed attractive enough to poor Richard Jones, who was making at home 'some tymes a shillinge a day and some tymes nothinge'. But it hardly bears out the statement of Erhard Cellius that the English returned home 'auro et argento onusti'. And in fact those who essayed a career in Germany were the failures of London. 'Some of our cast dispised stage players', Moryson calls them, and many years later, in 1625, the same tale is told by the words put into the mouths of actors in
- ↑ Archiv für Litteratur-Geschichte, xv. 212, from diary of Martin Crusius at Tübingen in 1597: 'Es sind wol x Comoedianten hie gewesen: qui 5 aut 6 dies comoedias egerunt in domo frumentaria. Dicuntur Angli esse et miri artifices. Sunt illi quibus Dux noster 300 fl. donasse dicitur. Ego non spectaui. Quid ad hominem ista septuagenario maiorem? fuerunt illa dramata amatoria. Hodie Susannam egerunt. Ego sum scriptoribus Homericis occupatus.'
- ↑ Cohn, lxxx.
- ↑ C. F. Meyer in Sh.-Jahrbuch, xxxviii. 200.
- ↑ C. Harris in M. L. A. xxii. 446.
