to 'Lawrence Dutton and John Dutton her maiesties players and there companye'; and that this distinction indicates some further development of the tendency to bifurcation already observed may be gathered from a study of the provincial records for 1590-1. On the very day of the performance of 14 February Queen's men were also at Southampton, and the form of the entry indicates that they were there playing in conjunction with the Earl of Sussex's men. This was the case also at Coventry on 24 March and at Gloucester during 1590-1.[1] At Ipswich during the same year there are two entries, of 'the Quenes players' on 15 May 1591 and of 'another company of the Quenes players' on 18 May. Obviously two groups were travelling this year and one had strengthened itself by a temporary amalgamation with Sussex's. Perhaps the normal combination was restored when the two groups found themselves on the same road at the end of May, for Queen's men are recorded alone at Faversham on 2 June 1591, at Wirkburn on 18 August, and at Coventry on 24 August and 20 October.
It was probably during this summer that Greene, having sold Orlando Furioso to the Queen's men for twenty nobles, resold it 'when they were in the country' to the Admiral's for as much more. The winter of 1591-2 marks a clear falling-off in the position of the company at Court, since they were only called upon to give one performance, on 26 December, as against six assigned to Lord Strange's men, with whom at this date Alleyn and the Admiral's men appear to have been in combination. Yet it was still possible for the City, writing to Archbishop Whitgift on 25 February 1592, to suggest that Elizabeth's accustomed recreation might be sufficiently served, without the need for public plays, 'by the privat exercise of hir Ma^{ts} own players in convenient place'.[2] That they were again making use of the Theatre may perhaps be inferred from a passage in Nashe's Summer's Last Will and Testament of the following autumn, in which a Welshman is said to 'goe ae Theater, and heare a Queenes Fice, and he make hur laugh, and laugh hur belly-full'.[3] During 1591-2 they were at Nottingham, Coventry, Stratford-*
- ↑ Murray, ii. 398 (Southampton), 'the Queenes maiesties & the Earle of Sussex players, xxx^s'; 240 (Coventry), 'the Quenes players & the Erle of Sussex players, xv^s'; 284 (Gloucester), 'the Queenes and the Earle of Sussex players, xxx^s'. At Faversham (Murray, ii. 274) separate payments of 1590-1 for the Queen's (20s.) and Essex's (10s.) are followed by 'to the Queen's Players and to the Earl of Essex's Players' (20s.). It is conceivable that in this last entry 'Essex's' may be a slip for 'Sussex's'.
- ↑ App. D, No. lxxxv.
- ↑ Nashe, Works, iii. 244.
