Hunsdon's alone at Norwich in 1582-3, Bath in June 1583, and Exeter in July 1583. Hunsdon became Lord Chamberlain on 4 July 1585. Between October and December of that year, a visit was paid to Leicester by 'the Lord Chamberlens and the Lord Admiralls players', and on 6 January 1586 'the servants of the lo: Admirall and the lo: Chamberlaine' gave a play at Court. These entries suggest an amalgamation of Hunsdon's men with those of Lord Admiral Howard, both of whom had perhaps been weakened by the formation of the Queen's men in 1583. But if so, it was only a partial or temporary one, for while the Admiral's men established themselves in London, the Chamberlain's are traceable in the provinces, at Coventry in 1585-6, at Saffron Walden in 1587-8, and at Maidstone in 1589-90.
An interval of four or five years renders improbable any continuity between this company and the famous Lord Chamberlain's company, which first emerged on the resorting of the plague-stricken mimes in 1594, passed under royal patronage in 1603, and prolonged an existence illumined by the genius of Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, Massinger and Shirley, until the closing of the theatres in 1642. The first notice of the new organization is in June 1594, when 'my Lord Admeralle men and my Lorde Chamberlen men' played from the 3rd to the 13th of the month, either in combination or separately on allotted days, for Henslowe at Newington Butts.[1] Some of the plays given during this period can be traced to the subsequent repertory of the Admiral's men; others, which cannot, may be assigned to the Chamberlain's. They are Hester and Ahasuerus, Titus Andronicus, Hamlet, and Taming of A Shrew, which, although so described, may of course have been really the Taming of The Shrew, Shakespeare's adaptation of the older play entered in the Stationers' Register on the previous 2 May. It is ingeniously, and I think rightly, inferred from a line drawn in Henslowe's account after 13 June, that from that date all the performances recorded are by the Admiral's men, probably at the Rose, and that his relations with the Chamberlain's men had ceased. The company is found at Marlborough about September, and on 8 October Lord Hunsdon wrote to the Lord Mayor, asking permission for 'my nowe companie' to continue an occupation of the Cross Keys,[2] on which it seems to have already entered.*
