Crane and under Bower, it may be doubted whether they were quite so prominent as they had been in Cornish's time. Certainly they had to contend with the competition of the Paul's boys. Crane himself is not known to have been a dramatist. It has been suggested that Bower's authorship is indicated by the initials R. B. on the title-page of Apius and Virginia (1575), but, in view of the date of the publication, this must be regarded as very doubtful. The chief Marian producer of plays was Nicholas Udall, but it remains uncertain whether he wrote for the Chapel Children. Professor Wallace has no justification whatever for his confident assertions that John Heywood 'not only could but did' write plays for the Chapel, that he 'had grown up in the Chapel under Cornish', and that 'as dramatist and Court-entertainer' he 'was naturally associated with the performances of the Chapel'.[1] There is no proof whatever that Heywood began as a Chapel boy, and although he certainly wrote plays for boys, they are nowhere said or implied to have been of the Chapel company. There are scraps of evidence which indicate that they may have been the Paul's boys.[2] It is also conceivable that they may have been Philip van Wilder's young minstrels.
When Elizabeth came to the throne, then, the Chapel had already a considerable dramatic tradition behind it. But for a decade its share in the Court revels remains somewhat obscure. The Treasurer of the Chamber records no payments for performances to its Masters before 1568.[3] A note in a Revels inventory of 1560 of the employment of some white sarcenet 'in ffurnishinge of a pley by the children of the Chapple' may apparently refer to any year from 1555 to 1560, and it is therefore hazardous to identify the Chapel with the anonymous players of the interlude of 31 December 1559 which contained 'suche matter that they wher commondyd to leyff off'.[4] Bower may of course have retained
- ↑ Wallace, i. 77.
- ↑ Cf. p. 12.
- ↑ It is possible that the Treasurer of the Chamber did not pay all the rewards for plays during the earlier years of the reign; but the suggestion of Wallace, i. 108, that, if we had the Books of Queen's Payments, more information might be available, seems to show a failure to realize the identity of the Tudor Books of King's Payments with the T. of C. Accounts. There might, however, be rewards in a book subsidiary to the Privy Purse Accounts. I do not think that much can be made of the recital of 'playes' as well as 'maskes' in the preamble of the Revels Accounts for 1558-9, during which the T. of C. paid no rewards, since this may be merely 'common form'.
- ↑ Feuillerat, Eliz. 34; cf. Appendix A. Naturally no 'reward' would be paid in such circumstances. Fleay, 16, 32, 60, conjectures that the play was Misogonus.
