repeate it again, That his G. had vowed they should never play more, but should first begg their bred and he wold have his vow performed, And therefore my lo. chamberlain by himselfe or your ll. at the table should take order to dissolve them, and to punish the maker besides.'
Sir Thomas Lake appears to have been under the impression
that two companies were concerned, and that the 'matters
of France' were not played by the Children of Blackfriars.
If so, we must suppose that Byron was originally produced
elsewhere, perhaps by the King's Revels, and transferred to
the Blackfriars after 'reformation' by the Council. M. de la
Boderie, however, writes as if the same company were
responsible for both plays, and perhaps it is on the whole
more probable that Sir Thomas Lake misunderstood the situation.
I feel very little doubt that the maker of the play on
the mines was once more Marston, who was certainly summoned
before the Privy Council and committed to Newgate,
on some offence not specified in the extant record, on 8 June
1608.[1] And this was probably the end of his stormy connexion
with the stage. He disappeared from the Blackfriars
and from literary life, leaving The Insatiate Countess
unfinished, and selling the share in the syndicate which he had
acquired from Evans about 1603 to Robert Keysar for £100.
Before making his purchase, Keysar, who tells us that he put
a value of £600 on the whole of the enterprise, got an assurance,
as he thought, from the King's men that they would not
come to any arrangement with Henry Evans which would
prejudice his interests.[2] This the King's men afterwards
denied, and as a matter of fact the negotiations, tentatively
opened as far back as 1603, between Evans and Burbadge
for a surrender of the lease were now coming to a head, and
its actual surrender took place about August 1608.[3] On the
ninth of that month Burbadge executed fresh leases of the
theatre to a new syndicate representing the King's men.[4]
The circumstances leading up to Evans's part in this transaction
became subsequently the subject of hostile criticism
by Kirkham, who asserted that the lease, which Alexander
Hawkins held in trust, had been stolen from his custody by
Mrs. Evans, and that the surrender was effected with the
fraudulent intention of excluding Kirkham from the profits
to which he was entitled under the settlement of 1602.[5]
According to Evans, however, Kirkham was at least implicitly
