English actors amongst the merchants.[1] Englishmen played at Cologne in October and November 1592,[2] and at Nuremberg in August 1593;[3] but in view of the Nyköping company it can hardly be assumed that these were Browne and his fellows, and indeed the leader at Nuremberg is called 'Ruberto Gruen', which may, but on the other hand may not, be a blunder for Browne's name. The Cologne players are anonymous. At any rate 'Robert Braun, Thomas Sachsweil, Johan Bradenstreit und consorten' were all at Frankfort in August 1593,[4] where they played scriptural dramas, including Abraham and Lot and The Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrha. Thereafter the company seems to have broken up. Richard Jones certainly went home before 2 September 1594, when he bought a gown 'of pechecoler in grayne' from Henslowe.[5] He had doubtless already joined the Admiral's men.
Thomas Sackville and John Bradstreet probably went to Wolfenbüttel. This was the capital of Henry Julius, Duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel (1589-1613), himself the author of plays, mostly printed during 1593 and 1594, in which an English influence is perceptible. The Duke married Elisabeth, daughter of Frederick II of Denmark, and his wedding at Copenhagen in February 1590 was attended by his brother-in-law, afterwards James I of England. It is possible that his earliest play, Susanna, was written either for this occasion or for the repetition of his wedding ceremony at Wolfenbüttel. In this piece the jester, a conventional personage, bears the name 'Johan Clant', in the later plays 'Johan Bouset'; and in the Ehebrecherin (1594) Bouset says, quite irrelevantly to his dramatic character, 'Ich bin ein Englisch Mann'. Both names are in fact of English origin, from the words 'clown' and 'posset' respectively. Evidently the Duke must in some way have been in touch with the English stage at a date even earlier than Browne's second German visit in 1592. It is not, therefore, necessary to conjecture, as has been conjectured, that Wolfenbüttel was the first objective of this visit.[6] Unfortunately the Brunswick household accounts for 1590-1601 are missing, and with them all direct evidence of the first formation of his English company by the Duke has probably gone. The company existed by 1596, when
- ↑ Cf. vol. i, p. 343.
- ↑ Sh.-Jahrbuch, xxi. 247.
- ↑ Archiv, xiv. 116.
- ↑ Mentzel, 25.
- ↑ Henslowe, i. 29.
- ↑ Cohn, xxxiii, xxxviii; Goedeke, ii. 519; Herz, 8. A conventional clown, variously called 'Jahn Clam', 'Jahn Posset', 'Jahn der Engelländische Narr', &c., also appears in plays, from 1596 onwards, by Jacob Ayrer of Nuremberg, who has other debts, including the 'jig', to the English players (Cohn, lxi; Goedeke, ii. 545).
