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and others of 4 January 1610. One of these children was Robert Baxter, if he is the Baxter named in the Articles of Grievance as a fellow of the company with Taylor between March 1613 and March 1614.[1] During the same period it appears that William Ecclestone left the company. He afterwards joined the King's men. But, before he went, he took a part in The Honest Man's Fortune, which is stated in the Dyce MS. to have been played in 1613, while its 'principal actors' are named in the 1679 folio of Beaumont and Fletcher as 'Nathan Field, Robert Benfield, Emanuel Read, Joseph Taylor, Will. Eglestone and Thomas Basse'. This particular combination seems to point clearly to the Lady Elizabeth's men as the original producers of the play. A very similar cast is assigned in the same folio to The Coxcomb, namely, 'Nathan Field, Joseph Taylor, Giles Gary, Emanuel Read, Richard Allen, Hugh Atawell, Robert Benfeild, and William Barcksted'; and I think that this also must belong to a performance by the Lady Elizabeth's men about 1613. The Coxcomb had certainly been played at Court by the Queen's Revels in 1612, but it seems impossible that Taylor can then have been a member of that company.[2] The new blood brought in from Rosseter's company will, then, have included Field, Attwell, Richard Allen, Benfield, Reade, and perhaps Robert Baxter, of whom the first three had played in Jonson's Epicoene for the Revels in 1609. When it is remembered that Cary and Barksted had been in the same cast, it will be realized that the Lady Elizabeth's men, as constituted in 1613, were very much the Queen's Revels over again.

I think there can be no doubt that the Lady Elizabeth's men was the company principally referred to in the long series of letters from Robert Daborne to Henslowe, which runs from 17 April 1613 to 31 July 1614.[3] Daborne had been*

  1. Greg, Henslowe Papers, 58, 87, thinks that the 'Baxter' of the Grievances was William Barksted or Backstede. It may be so.
  2. Thorndike, 66, thinks that the list belongs to an earlier production by the Queen's Revels before 30 March 1610, when Taylor joined the Duke of York's. But there is no evidence that he was ever in the Queen's Revels.
  3. Henslowe Papers, 65, 125; A. E. H. Swaen, Robert Daborne's Plays (Anglia, xx. 153). The account in Fleay, i. 75, is full of inaccuracies. The documents now form separate articles of Dulwich MS. 1. All, unless otherwise specified below, are letters or undertakings from Daborne to Henslowe. Most of them are dated, and I think that the following ordering, due to Dr. Greg, is reasonable: (i) Art. 70, 17 Apr. 1613; (ii) Art. 71, 17 Apr. 1613; (iii) Art. 72, 25 Apr. 1613; (iv) Art. 73, 3 May 1613; (v) Art. 74, 8 May 1613; (vi) Art. 75, 16 May 1613; (vii) Art. 77, 19 May 1613; (viii) Art. 78, 5 June 1613; (ix) Art. 79, 10 June 1613; (xi) Art. 80, 18 June 1613; (xii) Art. 81, 25 June 1613; (xiii)? Art. 100,