board, livery, and travelling expenses, and a lodging allowance of forty thalers each. The Dresden archives give their names as Tomas Konigk, Tomas Stephan or Stephans, George Beyzandt, Tomas Papst, and Rupert Persten. Their departure from Court is recorded on 17 July 1587.[1] In all these notices music and acrobatic feats are to the fore, but that the men were actors there can be no doubt, for two of them, Thomas Pope and George Bryan, reappear amongst Strange's men, and thereafter as fellows of Shakespeare in the Chamberlain's company. Of Stevens, King, and Percy no more is known. Kempe was abroad again, in Italy and Germany, during 1601, and returned to England on 2 September. It is not certain whether he took a company with him, or went as a solitary morris dancer. But it is noteworthy that on the following 26 November an English company, under one Johann Kemp, reached Münster, after a tour which had taken them to Amsterdam, Cologne, Redberg, and Steinfurt. They played in English, and had a clown who pattered in German between the acts.[2]
The man, however, who did most to acclimatize the English actors in Germany was Robert Browne, who paid several visits to the country, and spent considerable periods there between 1590 and 1620. With him he took relays of actors, some of whom split off into independent associations, and account for most, although not all, of the groups of 'Engländer' who became familiar figures at the Frankfort spring and autumn fairs and even in out-of-the-way corners of northern Europe. Of some of these groups the wanderings can be traced in outline, although the frequent failure of the archives to record individual names is responsible for many lacunae, which the conjectural ingenuity of literary historians has done its best to fill. Many of these anonymous performances I must pass over in silence.
Robert Browne first appears as one of Worcester's men, with Edward Alleyn, in 1583, and in 1589 these two, probably as Admiral's men, still held a common stock of apparel with John Alleyn and Richard Jones.[3] His career abroad begins with a visit to Leyden in October 1590.[4] This was
- ↑ Fürstenau, 69; Cohn, xxiii; Bolte, Sh.-Jahrbuch, xxiii. 99. Herz, 5, endeavours to show traces of a visit to Danzig by this company.
- ↑ M. Röchell, Chronik, in J. Janssen, Gesch. des Bisthums Münster (1852), iii. 174; Cohn, cxxxiv (misdated 1599); Sh.-Jahrbuch, xxxvi. 274.
- ↑ Henslowe Papers, 31. Greg, Henslowe, ii. 8, disposes of the confusion between Robert Browne and Alleyn's step-father, John Browne.
- ↑ Cohn, xxxi. There seems nothing to connect the Andreas Röthsch who appeared at Leipzig in July 1591 with Browne, or even to justify the conjecture (Sh.-Jahrbuch, xlv. 311) that he was English.
