company, not improbably for the anti-papal farce of 6 January 1559, is to be found in the Chamber Account for 1558-60. It may be inferred that they never again played at Court. They were allowed to dwindle away. Browne and Reading died in 1563, Strowdewike on 3 June 1568, and Smith survived in solitary dignity until 1580.[1] Up to about 1573 he kept up some sort of provincial organization, doubtless with the aid of unofficial associates, and the Queen's players are therefore traceable in many municipal Account-books. In October 1559 they were at Bristol and before Christmas at Leicester, in 1559-60 at Gloucester, in 1560-1 at Barnstaple, in 1561 at Faversham,[2] in October-December 1561 at Leicester, in 1561-2 at Gloucester, Maldon, and Beverley, in July 1562 at Grimsthorpe, and on 4 October at Ipswich, in August 1563 at Bristol, in 1563-4 at Maldon, on 12 and 20 March 1564 at Ipswich again, and on 2 August at Leicester, in 1564-5 at Abingdon, Maldon, and Gloucester, in 1565-6 at Maldon, Oxford, and Shrewsbury, in July 1566 at Bristol, before 29 September at Leicester, and on 9 October at Ipswich, in July 1567 at Bristol, in 1567-8 at Oxford and Gloucester, in 1568-9 at Abingdon, Ipswich, and Stratford-upon-Avon,
- [Footnote: and with the error of £3 6s. in Hargreave MS. 215, f. 21^v (c. 1592-5),
Lord Chamberlain's Records, v. 33, f. 19^v (1593), Stowe MS. 572, f. 35^v (c. 1592-6), Harl. MS. 2078, f. 18^v (c. 1592-6). The inaccurate Cott. MS. Titus, B. iii, f. 176 (c. 1585-93) gives two 'Plaiers on Interludes' at £3 6s. The normal entry recurs in the Jacobean Lansd. MS. 272, f. 27 (1614) and Stowe MS. 575, f. 24 (1616), but a group of the early part of the reign (Addl. MS. 35848, f. 19; Addl. MS. 38008, f. 58^v; Soc. Antiq. MSS. 74, 75) have 'Plaiers on the In lute' or 'on in Lutes', at £3 6s. 8d. or £3 6s., which looks like an attempt to rationalize the Cotton MS. entry. And Stowe MS. 574, f. 16^v, has 'Players on Lute' at £3 6s. 8d., which some one has corrected by inserting the normal entry. All this suggests that many copyists of fee-lists in the seventeenth century confused the post of interlude player with that of a lute player, and the former was therefore probably obsolete, and its fee no longer paid to the royal players of the day (cf. ch. x). I cannot agree with E. Law, Shakespeare a Groom, of the Chamber, 26, 64, that the interlude players survived under James as 'mummers, who, perhaps, sang in a sort of recitative at masques and anti-masques'.]
- ↑ Chamber Declared Accounts (Pipe Office), 541, passim, 542, m. 3; Collier, i. 236; Cunningham, xxvii. I do not know how long John Young continued to draw his Exchequer 'annuity', but presumably he had retired on it.
- ↑ Fleay, 43, says, 'There was no specific company called the Queen's players till 1583; it was a generic title applied to any company who prepared plays for the Queen's amusement. In 1561 the players probably were the Earl of Leicester's servants.' I need hardly say that I do not accept this, which would not explain the disappearance of the 'Queen's' from provincial records between 1573 and 1583. For another use of the same improvised theory by Mr. Fleay, cf. App. D, No. lxxv.
