under the leadership of Edward Alleyn, to dispossess the Queen's men, after the death of Tarlton in 1588, from their pride of place. The fall of the Queen's men was sudden. In 1590-1 they gave four Court plays to two by their rivals; in 1591-2 they gave one, and their rivals six. In their turn they appear to have been reduced to forming a coalition with Lord Sussex's men.
The plague-years of 1592-4 brought disaster, chaos, and change into the theatrical world. Only the briefest London seasons were possible. The necessities of travelling led to further combinations and recombinations of groups, one of which may have given rise to the ephemeral existence of Lord Pembroke's men. And, by the time the public health was restored, the Queen's had reconciled themselves to a provincial existence, and continued until 1603 to make their harvest of the royal name, as their predecessors in title had done, without returning to London at all. The combination of which Alleyn had been the centre broke up, and its component elements reconstituted themselves as the two great companies of the Chamberlain's and the Admiral's men. Between these there was a vigorous rivalry, which sometimes showed itself in lawsuits, sometimes in the more legitimate form of competing plays on similar themes. Thus a popular sentiment offended by the Chamberlain's men in 1 Henry IV was at once appealed to by the Admiral's with Sir John Oldcastle. And when the Admiral's scored a success by their representation of forest life in Robin Hood, the Chamberlain's were quickly ready to counter with As You Like It. I think the Chamberlain's secured the better position of the two. They had their Burbadge to pit against the reputation of Alleyn; they had their honey-tongued Shakespeare; and they had a business organization which gave them a greater stability of membership than any company in the hands of Henslowe was likely to secure. If one may once more use the statistics of Court performances as a criterion, they are found to have appeared thirty-two times and their rivals only twenty times from 1594 to 1603. Between them the Chamberlain's and the Admiral's enjoyed for some years a practical monopoly of the London stage, which received an official recognition by the action of the Privy Council in 1597. But this state of things did not long continue. Ambitious companies, such as Pembroke's, disregarded the directions of the Council. Derby's men, Worcester's, Hertford's, one by one obtained at least a temporary footing at Court, and in 1602 the influence of the Earl of Oxford was strong enough to bring about the admission to a permanent home in London
