'instrumentister', Johann Krafftt, Johann Personn, Johann Kirck or Kirckmann, and Thomas Bull, were at the Danish Court as early as 1579-80, and in 1585 certain unnamed English played (lechte) in the courtyard of the town-hall at Elsinore, when the press of folk was such that the wall broke down. These may be the same men who played and vaulted at Leipzig on 19 July 1585, and are the earliest English players yet traced in Germany.[1] But the particular comedians referred to by Heywood were probably another company who had accompanied Leicester to Holland, when he took the command of the English forces in 1585, and had given a show, half dramatic, half acrobatic, of The Forces of Hercules at Utrecht on 23 April 1586. Certainly Leicester had in his train one Will, a 'jesting plaier', who is now usually identified with William Kempe, and in August and September 1586 the Household Accounts of the Danish Court record the presence of 'Wilhelm Kempe instrumentist', and of his boy Daniell Jonns. It is not clear what were the precise relations between Kempe and five other 'instrumentister och springere', Thomas Stiwens, Jurgenn Brienn, Thomas Koning, Thomas Pape, and Robert Persj, who were at Court from 17 June to 18 September 1586, and for whom the same accounts record a payment to Thomas Stiuens of six thalers a month apiece, at the end of that period. If he had, as is probable, been their fellow up to that point, he did not accompany them in their further peregrinations.[2] These took them to the Court of Frederick's nephew, Christian I, Elector of Saxony (1586-91), as a result of correspondence, still extant, between the sovereigns, in which the offer of salaries at the annual rate of 100 thalers overcame the reluctance of the Englishmen to face the perils of an unknown tongue. They started with an interpreter on 25 September, and shortly after their arrival at Waidenhain on 16 October received instructions from Christian to follow him with mourning clothes to Berlin, where he was then sojourning. Christian's own capital was Dresden, and here they held a formal appointment in his service, under which they were bound to follow him in his travels, and to entertain him with performances after his banquets, and with music and 'Springkunst', and were entitled, beyond their pay, to
- ↑ Sh.-Jahrbuch, xlv. 311, '5 Thaler den englischen Spielleuten, so ufm Rathaus ihr Spiel mit Springen und allerlei Kurzweil getrieben'.
- ↑ The inevitable attempt to show that Shakespeare 'must' have been of the party was made by J. Stefansson, Shakespeare at Elsinore, in Contemporary Review, lxix. 20, and disposed of by H. Logeman, Shakespeare te Helsingör in Mélanges Paul Fredericy (1904); cf. Sh.-Jahrbuch, xii. 241.
