for a weekly payment of 8s., 'because after the said agreements made, the complainant [Kirkham] and his said parteners would at their directions haue the dieting and ordering of the boyes vsed about the plaies there, which before the said complainant had, and for the which he had weekely before that disbursed and allowed great sommes of monie'.[1]
Of the new managers, Rastall was a merchant and Kendall a haberdasher, both of London.[2] Kirkham has generally been assumed to be the Yeoman of the Revels, but of this there is not, so far as I know, any definite proof. The association did not prove an harmonious one. According to Evans, Kirkham and his fellows made false information against him to the Lord Chamberlain, as a result of which he was 'comaunded by his Lordship to avoyd and leave the same', had to quit the country, and lost nearly £300 by the charge he was put to and the negligence of Hawkins in looking after his profits.[3] This seems to have been in May 1602. Meanwhile the performances continued. The company did not appear at Court during the winter of 1602-3, but Sir Giles Goosecap and possibly Chapman's Gentleman Usher were produced by them before the end of Elizabeth's reign; and on 18 September 1602 a visit was paid to the theatre by Philipp Julius, Duke of Stettin-Pomerania, of which the following account is preserved in the journal of Frederic Gerschow, a member of his suite:[4]
'Von dannen sind wir auf die Kinder-comoediam gangen, welche
im Argument iudiciret eine castam viduam, war eine historia einer
königlichen Wittwe aus Engellandt. Es hat aber mit dieser Kinder-*comoedia
die Gelegenheit: die Königin hält viel junger Knaben, die
sich der Singekunst mit Ernst befleissigen müssen und auf allen
Instrumenten lernen, auch dabenebenst studieren. Diese Knaben
- ↑ K. v. P. 244. Wallace, ii. 102, adds the actual terms of the bond. He takes Evans's explanation to mean that hitherto Evans had maintained the boys and the plays out of official funds supplied through Kirkham as Yeoman of the Revels, but that now Evans's name was to be kept out of the business, and disbursements made by his partners, who were to pay him 8s. a week as a kind of steward. I cannot suppose that Kirkham had been the channel of any official subvention, and, on the whole, think it probable that the second 'compl^t' in the extract from the pleading is an error for 'def^t'. This leaves it not wholly clear why Evans should allege his relief from great weekly disbursements as a reason for receiving 8s. a week; but if we had the Articles of Agreement, the point would probably be clear. Possibly Evans had in the past made the equivalent of a weekly sum of 8s. out of board-wages passed on to him by Giles.
- ↑ Wallace, ii. 88.
- ↑ E. v. K. 213, 217, 220.
- ↑ G. von Bülow and W. Powell in R. H. S. Trans. vi. 26; Wallace, ii. 105; with translations.
