possibly the breakfast allowance of £16 a year and the largess of £9 13s. 4d. for high feasts, and the occasional rewards for actual performances. None of these, of course, passed through the Revels Office, and although this office may, as in the past, have helped to furnish the actual plays at Court, the cost of exercising in public remained a speculation of the Master and his backers, who had to look for recoupment and any possible profits to the sums received from spectators. If it is true, as Gerschow seems to say, that performances were only given on Saturdays, the high entrance charge of 1s. is fully explained. The lawsuits, of course, bear full evidence to the expenditure by the members of the syndicate upon the 'setting forward' of plays.[1] Nor is there any ground for asserting, as Professor Wallace does, that there were two distinct sets of children, one lodged in or near the palace for chapel purposes proper, and the other kept at the Blackfriars for plays.[2] It is true that Clifton charged Giles with impressing boys who could not sing, but Gerschow's account proves that there were others at the Blackfriars who could sing well enough, and it would be absurd to suppose that there was one trained choir for the stage and another for divine service. Doubtless, however, the needs of the theatre made it necessary to employ, by agreement or impressment, a larger number of boys than the twelve borne on the official establishment.[3] And that boys whose voices had broken were retained in the theatrical company may be inferred from the report about 1602 that the Dowager Countess of Leicester had married 'one of the playing boyes of the chappell'.[4] I cannot, finally, agree with Professor Wallace in assuming that the play attended by Elizabeth at the Blackfriars on 29 December 1601 was necessarily a public one at the theatre; much less that it was 'only one in a series of such attendances'. She had dined with Lord Hunsdon at his house in the Blackfriars. The play may have been in his great chamber, or he may have borrowed the theatre next door for private use on an off-day. And the actors may even more probably have been his own company than the Chapel boys.[5]
The appointment of a new Lord Chamberlain by James I seems to have enabled Evans to return to England. He found
- ↑ E. v. K. 217; K. v. P. 224, 227, 229, 231, 236, 248.
- ↑ Wallace, ii. 73.
- ↑ Wallace, ii. 75, shows that the Blackfriars repertory would require twenty or twenty-five actors.
- ↑ Gawdy, 117.
- ↑ Wallace, ii. 95. Dudley Carleton wrote to John Chamberlain on 29 Dec. 1601 (S. P. D. Eliz. cclxxxii. 48), 'The Q: dined this day priuatly at my L^d Chamberlains; I came euen now from the blackfriers where I saw her at the play with all her candidae auditrices'; cf. M. L. R. ii. 12.
