brought in to the Theater', were The Blacksmith's Daughter and his own Catiline's Conspiracies, and in 1582 assigns to the same house Lodge's, if it was Lodge's, Play of Plays and Pastimes given on the last 23 February, the play of The Fabii and possibly the history of Caesar and Pompey.[1] Presumably The Fabii is The Four Sons of Fabius, presented by Warwick's men at Court on 1 January 1580. Warwick's men had therefore probably replaced Leicester's at the Theatre, and it was the same men, then in the service of the Earl of Oxford, who were concerned in a riot at the Theatre on 10 April 1580.[2] In 1582 came the controversy between Edmund Peckham and Giles Allen about the freehold of the Theatre site, as a result of which Burbadge was 'disturbed and trobled in his possession', and 'the players for sooke the said Theater to his great losse'.[3] So there was probably another change at this time. And in 1583 there was a complete reshuffling of all the London companies on the formation of the Queen's men. Professor Wallace, who is primarily considering that part of the evidence which he has himself discovered, says that the Queen's did not act at the Theatre.[4] But most certainly they did. It is true that, when an inhibition against the Theatre and Curtain was obtained on 14 June 1584, the owner of the Theatre, 'a stubburne fellow', described himself as Lord Hunsdon's man. Nevertheless the only companies named as concerned are the Queen's and Arundel's, and Burbadge may not himself have been then acting.[5] And as to the presence of the Queen's in the Theatre at some date there is no doubt. Tarlton is not traceable in any other company than the Queen's, and it was at the Theatre that Tarlton made jests of Richard Harvey's Astrological Discourse upon the Conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter, published in 1583.[6] The Queen's certainly did not confine themselves to
- ↑ Cf. App. C, Nos. xxii, xxx. Fleay, 40, 88, 145, identifies The Play of Plays in which Delight was a character with the Delight shown at Court by Leicester's on 26 Dec. 1580, and Caesar and Pompey, which Gosson does not quite clearly assign to the Theatre at all, with the Pompey shown by Paul's on 6 Jan. 1581; and conjectures successive occupations by Leicester's (1576-83), Paul's (1582), Queen's and Hunsdon's (1584), Queen's and Oxford's (1585), Queen's (1586-93), Chamberlain's (1594-7). He was unlucky in omitting the Admiral's from his guesses.
- ↑ Cf. App. D, Nos. xliii, xliv.
- ↑ Wallace, 201 (Cuthbert Burbadge), 239 (Smith), 240 (May), 242 (Tilt).
- ↑ Ibid. 11.
- ↑ Cf. App. D, No. lxxiv.
- ↑ Nashe, Pierce Penilesse (Works, i. 197). Harington, Metamorphosis of Ajax (1596), speaks of a vulgar word 'admitted into the Theater with great applause by the mouth of Mayster Tarlton, the excellent comedian'. It was near the Theatre that the writer of Tarltons Newes of Purgatorie (Tarlton, 54) had his dream of the dead actor.
