the 'furstelige comoedianten och springers' of the Duke paid a month's visit to Copenhagen for the coronation of his brother-in-law, Christian IV of Denmark, on 29 August.[1] In the following year we find 'Jan Bosett und seine Gesellen' at Nuremberg, 'Thomas Sackfeil und Consorten' at Augsburg in June, 'Johann Busset' and Jakob Behel at Strassburg in July and August, and 'Thomas Sackville, John Bouset genannt', Johann Breitenstrasse and Jacob Biel at the Frankfort autumn fair.[2] The identity of this company with the Wolfenbüttel court comedians may perhaps be inferred from Sackville's use of John Bouset as a stage name, and from a reference, in this same year 1597, to 'Thomas Sackefiel, princely servant at Wolfenbüttel'. Another member of the company may have been Edward Wakefiel, with whom Sackville, also in 1597, had a brawl in a Brunswick tavern.[3] No more is heard of them until 1601, when John Bouset was expected to join his old friend Robert Browne for the Frankfort Easter fair.[4] The Brunswick household accounts are extant for 1602 and 1608, and from 1614 onwards. Thomas Sackville appears frequently. On 30 August 1602 he took a payment for the English comedians. Later references to him from 1 October 1602 to 1617 are mainly in connexion with purchases for the ducal wardrobe. It seems clear that, while remaining a ducal servant, and possibly even an actor, he went into business and prospered therein.[5] He is said to have been selling silk at Frankfort in 1604, and in 1608 Thomas Coryat, the Odcombian traveller and oddity, records:
'The wealth that I sawe here was incredible. The goodliest shew
of ware that I sawe in all Franckford, saving that of the Goldsmithes,
was made by an Englishman one Thomas Sackfield a Dorsetshire man,
once a servant of my father, who went out of England but in a meane
estate, but after he had spent a few yeares at the Duke of Brunswicks
Court, hee so inriched himselfe of late that his glittering shewe
- ↑ Sh.-Jahrbuch, xxiii. 103.
- ↑ Archiv, xii. 320; xiii. 316; xiv. 118; xv. 115; Mentzel, 26, 37.
Herz, 34, points out that about this date the Duke of Brunswick's Ehebrecherin
and Vincentius Ladislaus were played in Frankfort, probably by
these men. They are referred to at length by Marx Mangoldt, Markschiffs-Nachen
(1597), in a passage beginning:
Da war nun weiter mein Intent,
Zu sehen das Englische Spiel,
Dauon ich hab gehört so viel.
Wie der Narr drinnen, Jan genennt,
Mit Bossen wer so excellent.Herz, 34, also assigns to the company anonymous appearances at Ulm, Munich, and Tübingen in 1597 (Archiv, xii. 319; xiii. 316; xv. 212).
- ↑ Cohn, xxxiv.
- ↑ Cf. p. 279.
- ↑ Cohn, xxxiv.
