Vawsis, or my lord Ritches players, or sum other freshe starteupp comedanties unto me for sum newe devised interlude, or sum malt-*conceivid comedye fitt for the Theater, or sum other paintid stage whereat thou and thy lively copesmates in London maye lawghe ther mouthes and bellyes full for pence or twoepence apeece.'[1]
Doubtless many of this mushroom brood of 'freshe starteupp
comedanties' never succeeded in making good their permanent
footing in the metropolis. Lord Vaux's men, whom Harvey
mentions, were never fortunate enough to be summoned to
Court; and the same may be said of Lord Arundel's men,
Lord Berkeley's, and Lord Abergavenny's. Such men, after
their cast for fortune, had to drift away into the provinces,
and pad the hoof on the hard roads once more.
The next septennial period, 1583-90, witnessed the extinction, for a decade or so, of the boy companies, in spite of the new impulse given to the latter by the activity as a playwright of John Lyly. Of forty-five Court payments made during these years, thirty apparently went to men and only fifteen to boys. This ultimate success of the professional organizations may largely have been due to their employment of such university wits as Marlowe, Peele, Greene, Lodge, and Nashe in the writing of plays, with which Lyly could be challenged on his own ground before the Court, while a sufficient supply of chronicle histories and other popular stuff could still be kept on the boards to tickle the ears of the groundlings. The undisputed pre-eminence lay during this period with the Queen's men, who made within it no less than twenty-one appearances at Court. This company enjoyed the prestige of the royal livery, transferred to it from the now defunct Interluders, which had a ready effect in the unloosing of municipal pockets. And at its foundation in 1583 it incorporated, in addition to Tarlton, whose origin is unknown, the leading members of the pre-existing companies: Wilson and Laneham from Leicester's, Adams from Sussex's, and John Dutton from Oxford's. The former fellows of these lucky ones were naturally hardly able to maintain their standing. In January 1587 Leicester's, Oxford's, and the Admiral's were still setting up their bills side by side with those of the Queen's.[2] But the first two are not heard of at Court again, and even the Admiral's were hardly able to make a show except by coalition with other companies. Thus we find the Admiral's combining with Hunsdon's in 1585, and with Strange's perhaps from 1589 onwards, and it became the destiny of this last alliance,
