During the winter of 1603-4 the company gave eight more plays at Court, a larger number than Elizabeth had ever called for. They took place on 26, 27, 28, and 30 December 1603 and on 1 January and 2 and 19 February 1604. On New Year's Day there were two performances, one before James, the other before Prince Henry. The plague had not yet subsided by 8 February, and James gave his men £30 as a 'free gifte' for their 'mayntenaunce and releife' till it should 'please God to settle the cittie in a more perfecte health'. One of the plays of this winter was The Fair Maid of Bristow. Another, produced before the end of 1603, was probably Ben Jonson's Sejanus. For alleged popery and treason in this play Jonson was haled before the Privy Council by the Earl of Northampton, but there is nothing to show that the players were implicated. The principal actors in Sejanus were Burbadge, Shakespeare, Phillips, Heminges, Sly, Condell, John Lowin, and Alexander Cooke. This is Shakespeare's last appearance in the cast of any play. He may have ceased to act, while remaining a member of the company and its poet. The names of Lowin and Cooke are new. Lowin had been with Worcester's men in 1602-3. Cooke had probably begun his connexion with the company as an apprentice to Heminges. The identification of him with the 'Sander' of Strange's men in 1590 is more than hazardous. The Induction to Marston's Malcontent, published in 1604, records the names of Burbadge, who played Malevole, Condell, Sly, Lowin, Sincler, and a Tireman. Sincler was probably still only a hired man. Nothing further is heard of him. This Induction seems to have been written by John Webster to introduce the presentation by the King's men of The Malcontent, which was really a Chapel play. The transaction is thus explained:[1]
Sly. I wonder you would play it, another company having interest
in it?
Condell. Why not Malevole in folio with us, as Jeronimo in decimo-*sexto with them? They taught us a name for our play; we call it One for Another.
The play of Jeronimo, which the Chapel are here accused of
taking, cannot be The Spanish Tragedy, which was an Admiral's
play, and is not very likely to have been the 'comedy of
Jeronimo' which Strange's men had in 1592, and which was
evidently related to The Spanish Tragedy and may be expected
to have remained with it. It might be the extant First Part
of Jeronimo, written perhaps for the Chamberlain's men
- ↑ Marston, Malcontent, Ind. 82.
