Court at Halle. His company is traceable from 1604 to 1605, but I do not find any evidence of Machin's connexion with it. In May 1605 he appeared at Strassburg, and there claimed as his credentials only his four years' service with Maurice of Hesse.[1] Shortly before, he had been at the Frankfort Easter fair with Reeve, and the two returned to Frankfort in the autumn, and again at Easter 1606.[2]
Robert Browne, for some years after the opening of his fourth tour at Frankfort in the spring of 1601, does not appear to have attached himself to any particular Court. He is found at Frankfort, with Robert Jones, in September 1602, at Augsburg in the following November and December, at Nuremberg in February 1603, and at Frankfort for the Easter fair of the same year.[3] With him were then, but it would seem only temporarily, Thomas Blackwood and John Thare, late of Worcester's men, who had doubtless just come out from England, when Elizabeth's illness and death closed the London theatres.[4] He is probably the 'alte Komödiant', whose identity seems to have been thought sufficiently described by that term at Frankfort in the autumn of 1604.[5] He returned to Frankfort on 26 May 1606, and was at Strassburg in the following June and July.[6] Here he was accompanied by John Green. On this or some other visit to Strassburg, the company probably lost Robert Kingman, who, like Thomas Sackville, found business more profitable than strolling. He became a freeman of Strassburg in 1618, and in that year was able to befriend his old 'fellow' Browne, and in 1626 other actors on their visits to the city.[7] In the course of 1606 Browne seems to have entered the service of Maurice of Hesse, who in the previous year had built a permanent theatre, the Ottonium, at Cassel, and had now again an English company for the first time since 1602. This is to be inferred from an application for leave to play submitted to the Frankfort town council on 26 August 1606, and signed by 'Robert Braun', 'Johann Grün', and 'Robert Ledbetter' as 'Fürstlich Hessische Comödianten'. Earlier
- ↑ Archiv, xv. 117.
- ↑ Mentzel, 52.
- ↑ Mentzel, 50; Archiv, xiv. 122.
- ↑ The Frankfort archives call them 'Thomas Blackreude' and 'Johannes Fheer', which has prevented their identity with Worcester's men from being noticed.
- ↑ Mentzel, 51.
- ↑ Mentzel, 53; Archiv, xv. 117. Herz, 18, assigns to Browne anonymous appearances by Englishmen at Strassburg in June 1601, Ulm in Nov. 1602, Nördlingen in May 1605, and Ulm in May and June 1605. At Nördlingen a play from the prophet Jonah, possibly Greene and Lodge's Looking Glass for London and England, was given.
- ↑ Archiv, xv. 120. Coryat, ii. 183, saw him at Strassburg in 1608.
