seems to have been free of any liability to contribute towards the upkeep of the stock or other current expenses.[1] The shares were often subdivided, so that some members of the company were full sharers, others half sharers or three-quarter sharers.[2] The number of shares varied; an ordinary London company may be taken to have consisted of about ten or twelve sharers.[3] For travelling purposes it is probable that separate compositions were entered into, except perhaps for short summer tours, and that the numbers were smaller.[4] It should be made clear that the companies of players, although based upon the bodies of royal or noble servants constituted under patents or other warrants of appointment, were not precisely identical with these. Each company had to get the authority of such a warrant, before it was licensed to act at all, but the legal bond of association between its members was not the warrant, but the composition. As a rule the terms of the patents give or imply a power to those named in them to associate themselves with others. New members could doubtless be sworn into the service of the lord without any need for a fresh patent. But it cannot be held that every fellow sharer was necessarily a servant of the same lord, and still less that every servant named in a warrant was necessarily a sharer of any particular company acting under that warrant. Thus there is no proof that Laurence Fletcher, who is named first amongst the King's servants of 1603, ever acted with the King's men. Similarly Martin
- ↑ It is impossible to say what arrangement underlies the statement in an undated letter from Richard Jones to Alleyn about a German tour (Henslowe Papers, 33) that Robert Browne was 'put to half a shaer, and to stay hear, for they ar all against his goinge'.
- ↑ Hamlet, III. ii. 286: 'Hamlet. Would not this, sir, and a forest of feathers—if the rest of my fortunes turn Turk with me—with two Provincial roses on my razed shoes, get me a fellowship in a cry of players. Horatio. Half a share. Hamlet. A whole one, I.' For half-sharers, cf. ch. xiii (Queen's, Admiral's). Three-quarter sharers existed in the Lady Elizabeth's men about 1614; cf. T. M., Father Hubburd's Tales (Bullen, Middleton, viii. 64), 'The ant began to stalk like a three-quarter sharer'.
- ↑ The number of players named in the Jacobean patents varies from 7 to 14, but this gives little direct guidance as to the number of sharers. It is, however, consistent with my estimate, which is based mainly upon the number of Admiral's men shown at various times in contractual relations with Henslowe. There were 12 sharers in the Lady Elizabeth's company in 1611 and 12 in Queen Anne's company in 1617. Probably the Elizabethan companies ran rather smaller.
- ↑ Dekker, News from Hell (1606), 'a companie of country players, being nine in number, one sharer and the rest jornymen'; cf. p. 362.
