1599-1600 and 1600-1.[1] By Easter 1601, however, he had started on his fourth tour, and appeared once more at Frankfort, possibly in Kyd's Spanish Tragedy. With him were Robert Kingmann and Robert Ledbetter, and they were expecting to be joined by 'Johannen Buscheten und noch andere in unsere Companie gehörige Comödianten'. The old association of 1592 between Robert Browne and Thomas Sackville was, therefore, still in some sense alive.[2]
Meanwhile, Maurice of Hesse had not been wholly without English actors, since Browne and his fellows left Cassel in 1598. It would seem that George Webster returned from Heidelberg, or perhaps from Strassburg, to his service. The 'fürstlich-hessischen Komödianten und Musikanten' were at Frankfort in March, at Nuremberg in April 1600, and at Frankfort again at Easter 1601. The names recorded are those of George Webster, John Hill or Hüll, Richard Machin, and at Nuremberg Bernhardt Sandt.[3] Upon his second visit to Frankfort Webster would have met his old leader, now become his rival, Robert Browne. The Hessian company were for a third time at Frankfort in the autumn of 1601.[4] In the following year they left the Landgrave's service, not altogether to the regret of some of his subjects, who resented a patronage of foreign arts at the cost of their pockets.[5] Webster and Machin, with whom was then one Ralph Reeve, were still using their former master's name when they visited Frankfort at Easter 1603.[6] Thereafter they dropped it. Of Webster no more is heard. Machin is conjectured to have joined for a short time an English company in the service of Margrave Christian William, a younger son of the Elector Joachim Frederick of Brandenburg, which came to Frankfort for the Easter and autumn fairs of 1604.[7] The Margrave was administrator of the diocese of Magdeburg, and kept his
- ↑ On 21 Oct. 1603 Joan Alleyn wrote to Edward Alleyn (Henslowe Papers, 59), 'All the companyes be come hoame & well for ought we knowe, but that Browne of the Boares head is dead & dyed very pore, he went not into the countrye at all'. Obviously this is not Robert Browne, who lived many years longer. But it may have been a relative, as Lord Derby's men are very likely to have preceded Worcester's at the Boar's Head. There was at least one other actor of the name, Edward Browne, and possibly more (cf. ch. xv).
- ↑ Mentzel, 46.
- ↑ Mentzel, 45, 48; Archiv, xiv. 119. A performance at Dresden in Oct. 1600, assigned to them by Herz, 38, is anonymous.
- ↑ Mentzel, 48.
- ↑ Duncker, 267, from chronicle of Wilhelm Buch, 'Anno 1602 hat er die Engländer alle mit einander von sich gejagt und des springens und tanzens müde geworden'.
- ↑ Mentzel, 50.
- ↑ Mentzel, 51; Bolte, Das Danziger Theater, 34.
