Phillips and his fellows, and even their relation to the Essex crisis itself, may be glanced at in the satirical picture of the Roman actors in Jonson's Poetaster, produced by the Chapel boys in the course of 1601.[1] Certainly the play betrays its author's knowledge of a counter-attack which the Chamberlain's men were already preparing for him in Dekker's Satiromastix. This play, in which Dekker may have had some help from Marston, was entered in the Stationers' Register on 11 November 1601, and had probably been on the stage not long before. It is noteworthy that it was produced by the Paul's boys, as well as by the Chamberlain's men. It was actually published in 1602. Another play which may reasonably be assigned to 1601 is Twelfth Night.
In the following winter the company played at Court on 26 and 27 December 1601 and on 1 January and 14 February 1602. They also gave Twelfth Night at the Middle Temple feast on 2 February;[2] and I have very little doubt that it was they who furnished the play at which Elizabeth and her maids of honour were present in the Blackfriars after dining with Lord Hunsdon on 31 December.[3] The alleged production of Othello before the Queen when Sir Thomas Egerton entertained her at Harefield from 31 July to 2 August 1602 rests on a forgery by Collier.[4] It is possible that, as Professor Wallace conjectures, the play was on the capture of Stuhl Weissenburg, seen by the Duke of Stettin on 13 September 1602, may have been a Globe production.[5] Sir Thomas Cromwell, a play of unknown authorship belonging to the company, was published in the course of 1602, with an ascription on the title-page to W. S., and to this year I assign Shakespeare's All's Well that Ends Well and Troilus and Cressida. If so, the portrait of Ajax in the latter play cannot very well have been the 'purge' administered by Shakespeare to Jonson, to which reference is made in 2 Return from Parnassus. This is a Cambridge Christmas piece, probably of 1601-2, and in it Burbadge and Kempe are introduced as in search of scholars to write for them. Perhaps the Cambridge author did not know that Kempe had ceased to be the 'fellow' of Burbadge and Shakespeare in 1599, and was at the time playing with Worcester's men at the Rose. It is, however, just possible that after returning from his continental tour and before throwing in his lot with Worcester's, he may have rejoined the Chamberlain's for a while, and may
