David Kathman, Grocers, Goldsmiths, and Drapers

Grocers, Goldsmiths, and Drapers: Freemen and Apprentices in the Elizabethan Theater
DAVID KATHMAN
theater historians have gradually become aware that some people active in the English professional theater of the sixteenth and early-seventeenth centuries were freementhat is, members of livery companies, such as the Grocers and the Goldsmiths, which had developed out of medieval guilds centered around specic trades.1 The role of guilds and livery companies in the development of medieval English drama has long been recognized, as has their key role in the production of London Midsummer shows and Lord Mayors pageants. In recent years scholars have also uncovered valuable information about individual freemen on the professional stage.2 Even so, most theater historians continue to believe that only a handful of professional players were free of livery companies, that the apprenticeship system used by professional playing companies bore only an informal resemblance to that used by livery companies, and that the details of the binding of specic theatrical apprentices have vanished in the mists of time.
VER THE PAST TWO CENTURIES
An earlier version of this paper was written for William Ingrams theater history seminar at the 2002 meeting of the Shakespeare Association of America. I am grateful to William Ingram, Herbert Berry, David Bevington, Alan Nelson, and Bill Lloyd for comments and help of various kinds, and to Peter Blayney for his extensive comments and his encyclopedic knowledge of the London livery companies. In London I received indispensable help from the sta of the Guildhall Library, Penny Fussell at Drapers Hall, David Beasley at Goldsmiths Hall, Ursula Carlyle at Mercers Hall, David Wickham at Clothworkers Hall, and James Sewell at the Corporation of London Records Oce. All errors are, of course, my own. 1 Guilds were religious organizations, while the London livery companies are secular organizations whose members, unlike guild members, are free of the City of London and authorized to free apprentices. The distinction was an important one in the sixteenth century, despite the modern practice of using the terms guild and livery company interchangeably. See Valerie Hope, Clive Birch, and Gilbert Torry, The Freedom: The Past and Present of the Livery, Guilds, and City of London (Buckingham: Barracuda Books, 1982). 2 See Jean Robertson and D. J. Gordon, A Calendar of Dramatic Records in the Books of the Livery Companies of London 14851640 (Oxford: Malone Society, 1954); William Ingram, The Business of Playing (Ithaca, NY, and London: Cornell UP, 1992), 2830; Roslyn Knutson, Playing Companies and Commerce in Shakespeares Time (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2001); and E.A.J. Honigmann and Susan Brock, Playhouse Wills, 15581642 (Manchester and New York: Manchester UP, 1993), which gathers the wills of many freemen in one convenient volume.
SHAKESPEARE QUARTERLY
In fact, none of these assumptions are true. Many professional playersat least a few in every major London troupewere free of livery companies, as were a large percentage of managers associated with childrens playing companies. The London livery companies played a crucial role in the economics of the professional theater, particularly its apprenticeship system. Apprentice players were typically bound to masters who were free of companies such as the Drapers, Goldsmiths, or Grocers, and they were sometimes freed as members of those same companies despite being trained entirely for the stage. Whether or not they were freed, quite a few of these apprentices became adult players. The surviving records of these companies are a rich source of previously unknown biographical information, both about the players themselves and about their apprentices. In some cases, these records allow us to rescue the names of boy-players from oblivion. This essay is organized as follows. First, I present some background about the London livery companies and their apprenticeship system. I then oer an overview of how this apprenticeship system worked in the professional theater, as described in hitherto-unpublished testimony from a seventeenth-century Chancery lawsuit. Following this discussion are illustrations of how the system aected the careers of two professional players: John Heminges of the Chamberlains/Kings Men and William Perry, who led a series of traveling companies. The essays longest section lists more than fty theatrical freemen and summarizes their activities, including binding of apprentices; roughly half of these summaries contain previously unknown documentary evidence, and most of the rest gather recently published facts not found in the standard references. I conclude the paper with a look at the career of John Rhodes, a freeman of the Drapers who was involved with London theater for roughly four decades, and who bound some of the last apprentices to appear onstage, including Edward Kynaston. Collectively, this information provides a fairly clear picture of a system that persisted for more than a century but which has been largely overlooked by theater historians.
LIVERY COMPANIES, FREEMEN, AND APPRENTICES
In 1927 T. W. Baldwin wrote of the Elizabethan theater that most of these actors had been tradesmen, etc., and, as such, already members of gilds. They might thus formally apprentice these boys to their own trades, probably with the added advantage in London of giving them civic status as gild members, which otherwise they might not have.3 Three years later E. K. Chambers objected, claiming that the courts of the gilds would have a responsibility for seeing to it that the
3 T. W. Baldwin, The Organization and Personnel of the Shakespearean Company (Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1927), 37n.
FREEMEN AND APPRENTICES IN ELIZABETHAN THEATER
training was in their own craft.4 Baldwins conjecture turns out to be quite accurate, although he never conrmed it in the records of the livery companies. Chamberss assertion to the contrary, accepted by generations of scholars, is directly contradicted by the evidence. There were (and are) four ways for a man to become free of a livery company: servitude, patrimony, redemption, and translation. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries servitude was by far the most common method: a young man would be bound for a set number of years as apprentice to a master who was free of the company, usually residing with the master while learning his craft. Apprentices who completed their terms could pay a fee to become free of the company, after which they were entitled to bind their own apprentices. Patrimony and redemption were less common, but they still entitled a person to bind apprentices. Any son of a freeman could claim freedom in his fathers company by patrimony once he turned twenty-one and paid a fee, while a limited number of those who were suciently well o (and well connected) could purchase their freedom by redemption, as long as the company approved. On occasion a freeman of one livery company could transfer to a dierent company, a process known as translation. Modern scholars have tended to assume that the occupation of a freeman and his apprentices necessarily corresponded to his livery companythat a freeman of the Goldsmiths, for example, must have made his living working with gold and must have trained his apprentices in that craft. In fact, freemen were under no obligation to practice the trades of their companies, and a substantial minority made their living in other ways.5 Furthermore, a freeman could train his apprentices in his actual profession, whatever that might be, and they could still be legally bound and freed by his livery company. It was thus theoretically possible for a boy to be apprenticed and freed as a Goldsmith, for example, without his ever having handled a piece of gold.6 After 1562 apprenticeship in England was governed by the Acte towching dyvers Orders for Articers Laborers Servants of Husbandrye and Apprentices, which codied many, though not all, of the customs prevalent in London, where
E. K. Chambers, William Shakespeare: A Study of Facts and Problems, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1930), 2:85. 5 The Tolley case in Kings Bench (1615) armed the right of a freeman to practice whatever trade he chose; see Sir Henry Calthrop, Reports of special cases touching several customes and liberties of the city of London (London: Abel Roper, 1670), 917, abstracted in Tudor Economic Documents: Being Select Documents Illustrating the Economic and Social History of Tudor England, R. H. Tawney and Eileen Power, eds. (London: Longmans, 1924), 37883. 6 In this essay, the term Goldsmith (capitalized) signies a freeman of the Company of Goldsmiths, whatever he actually did for a living, while goldsmith (lowercased) signies someone who made a living working with gold; similarly with freemen of other companies, such as Grocers, Mercers, etc.
apprentices were generally not allowed to marry, were not to be bound before age fourteen or after age twenty-one, and had to be bound for a minimum of seven years.7 The 1562 statute specied that apprentices should not be freed before age twenty-four, but it was not uncommon for London apprentices to be freed at twenty-one or twenty-two. The law also specied that any householder over the age of twenty-four who practiced any Arte Misterie or Manuell Occupacion could bind apprentices, and in fact many apprenticeships did not involve livery companies at all. In London, however, livery companies and associated institutions such as the Mayors Court provided an ecient means of enforcing the regulations, and freemen of these companies had practical advantages over non-freemen. It was these advantages that made membership in livery companies attractive for professional players. In the Elizabethan theater, apprentices played the female roles, but the apprenticeship system also served as a training ground, and many apprentices went on to become sharers or hired men.8 A talented theatrical apprentice could be quite valuable; in 1632 the contract of the boy Stephen Hammerton was said to be worth 30, and in 1635 John Shank testied that he had paid 40 for the boy John Thompson.9 Apprentices in the major London playing companies were generally bound to freemen of livery companies such as the Grocers or Goldsmiths, either a freeman who was himself a player or a third party who agreed to let his apprentice be trained as a player. The most explicit description of the system appears in a series of Chancery depositions taken in 1655, during the period when the professional theater was outlawed in England. The case in question, de Caine v. Wintershall, arose from a dispute over an 80 bond made in 1624 between Richard Gunnell, part-owner of the Fortune playhouse, and six sharers in the company that played there, including Andrew Cane (who adopted the variant name de Caine late in life).10 Gunnell
complete text of the statute (5 Eliza. c.4) can be found in The Statutes of the Realm (Bualo, NY: William S. Hein and Co., 1993), 4.1.41422, a reprint of the original 181028 edition. The restrictions about apprentices not marrying and not being bound before age fourteen were not spelled out in the statute, but they were enforced in London. 8 Some scholars have recently disputed the idea that female roles were played by boys, suggesting that adult male sharers took these roles instead. However, in an article titled How Old Were Shakespeares Boy-Actors? (forthcoming in Shakespeare Survey 57), I show that the players performing signicant female roles before the Restoration were between twelve and twenty-one years old in every case for which evidence exists. 9 See G. E. Bentley, The Salisbury Court Theater and Its Boy Players, Huntington Library Quarterly 40 (1997): 12949, esp. 141; and Glynne Wickham, Herbert Berry, and William Ingram, eds., English Professional Theatre, 15301160 (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2000), 225. 10 The bill and answer in this case (PRO C10/32/31) are dated 24 October and 1 October (for 1 November) 1654, and are discussed by Leslie Hotson in The Commonwealth and Restoration Stage (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1928), 5254. Hotson was not aware of the depositions in the case,
7 The
died in 1634, but two decades later his daughter Margaret, having married the player William Wintershall, sued Cane for 40, which she claimed he owed her from the thirty-year-old bond. Cane countersued, and on 1 February 1655, Canes lawyer took depositions from ve witnesses: Ellis Worth, William Hall, John Wright, and Henry Hammerton (all former players), and Edward de Caine (Andrew Canes son).11 Worth, Hall, and Hammerton agreed that players in London companies frequently committed themselves to bonds such as the one under dispute. These bonds obligated the parties to pay a penalty at a certain date, but their real purpose was to keep the company together, the money being demanded only if a player went to act at another playhouse. According to Worths deposition,
the reason why the Condicion of such bonds were made for payment of money as aforesaid & not with Condicion to keepe the players together . . . was for that itt was held vnlawfull to bynd players or Actors with such Expresse Condicion that they should play at such a house or the like.12
In order to show that such discrepancies between the letter and the spirit of contracts were commonplace, Canes lawyer also asked his witnesses about the status of theatrical apprentices. Worths answer deserves to be quoted in full:
That hee doeth knowe that itt was an vsuall vsage & Custome with & Amongest the Masters & Chiefe Actors of the ortune Playhouse aforesaid & other Playhouses in and aboute London, to take youthes & boyes to bee their Apprentices or Covenant servants to serve & Abide with them for Certaine number of yeares And hee sayeth that the said Masters and Cheife Actors Did vsually bynde such boyes & youthes as Apprentices to themselfes or some others that were freemen of some trade or other And that such boyes and servants Did vsually Acte & play partes in Comidies and Tragidyes att the fortune & other play houses although such youthes or boyes were not bound to Acte playes by Covenant in Expresse words. And this Deponent knoweth that some of those boyes or youthes were made free of such particuler Trades as their severall Masters vsed besides playinge. . . .
John Wright adds the following details:
but two of these were cited in passing (and somewhat inaccurately) by C. J. Sisson in The Red Bull Company and the Importunate Widow, Shakespeare Survey 7 (1954): 5768, esp. 67n. 11 The depositions are PRO C24/785/53 (in Part 1); they are dated 1 February 1654, but from the date of the bill and answer, it is clear that this means 1654/5. 12 In this and all other quotations from these depositions, I have expanded abbreviations but otherwise retained the original spelling. For ease of reading, I have also omitted words and phrases that the scribe struck out, and have incorporated interlineations into the text.
And this Deponent sayeth that hee himselfe was bound as an Apprentice to the said partie [Cane] for A Certaine number of yeares to Learne the trade of A Goldsmith, And hee sayeth that hee this Deponent Did vsually Acte & play partes in Comidyes & Tragedies in the tyme of his Apprenticshipp and was afterwards made free of the Trade of A Goldsmith which the said partie vsed. . . .
Everything Wright says here is supported by the documentary record. The Goldsmiths apprentice book for this period shows that Andrew Cane, a freeman of that company, bound John Wright as his apprentice on 27 November 1629 for a term of eight years. The cast list in the 1632 quarto of Shakerley Marmions Hollands Leaguer shows Wright playing Milliscent (a female role) alongside Cane, who played Trimalchio. Wright was freed as a Goldsmith on 13 March 1646, with Worth certifying his service, since Cane was then in the army.13 Wrights apprenticeship to a livery-company freeman was hardly an isolated incident. At least a dozen apprentices bound to professional players in livery companies are known to have performed onstagea remarkable number considering the fragmentary state of our knowledge of boy-players and the haphazard survival of apprenticeship records for these companies.14 Numerous other apprentices bound to such freemen lack a documented stage career but probably did appear on the boards. It may well be that the apprentices named in livery-company records represent only a fraction of the servants bound by theatrical freemen. Let us consider two professional players who were free of livery companies: John Heminges, free of the Grocers, and William Perry, free of the Drapers. In some ways they are a study in contrasts: Heminges was a member of the principal London troupe for more than three decades, while Perry operated on the fringes of professional theater, albeit over a similar span of time. Together, the careers of these men illustrate the relationship between London livery companies and the theaters apprenticeship system.
JOHN HEMINGES, CITIZEN AND GROCER
John Heminges, a longtime member of the Kings Men and famous as the cocompiler (with Henry Condell) of the 1623 Shakespeare First Folio, was baptized
See the Company of Goldsmiths, Apprentice Book 1, fol. 294v; G. E. Bentley, The Profession of Player in Shakespeares Time (Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1984), 28081; and the Goldsmiths Court Book X, 13 March 1646. All Goldsmiths records cited here are deposited at Goldsmiths Hall in London and are quoted with the permission of the company and its librarian, David Beasley. 14 Of the twelve great livery companies of London, ve (the Mercers, Drapers, Fishmongers, Salters, and Clothworkers) have no signicant apprenticeship records before 1603, and another three (the Goldsmiths, Merchant Taylors, and Haberdashers) have no apprenticeship records before 1580. The records that do survive vary widely in the amount of information they provide.
13
in Droitwich, Worcestershire, on 25 November 1566. On 25 May 1578 he was apprenticed to James Collins, Grocer, for nine years, and he was sworn as a freeman of the Grocers on 24 April 1587.15 He may have been connected with the Queens Men around this time, for on 10 March 1588 he was licensed to marry Rebecca Knell (ne Edwards), the sixteen-year-old widow of Queens Man William Knell, who had been killed by a fellow actor, John Towne, at Thame, Oxfordshire, while on tour the previous year.16 The couple settled in St. Mary Aldermanbury and had at least thirteen children between 1590 and 1611. At the same time, Heminges was acting, rst with Stranges Men by 1593, then with the Lord Chamberlains Men, probably from the companys founding in 1594. Heminges also became the business manager of the Chamberlains Men (which became the Kings Men in 1603), serving in that capacity until his death in 1630. While the outlines of Hemingess acting career are well known, his activities as a member of the Grocers Company have gone largely unnoticed. On 13 December 1608 John Heminges,citizen and grocer of London, was admitted as one of the ten seacoal-meters of London, replacing Stationer John Keale, and soon afterward he took John Jackson as his deputy.17 (Five years later Heminges and Jackson both served as trustees for William Shakespeares purchase of the Blackfriars gatehouse.) The seacoal-meters, all citizens, were charged with measuring all coal imported to London, but the position, which Heminges held until 1626, was actually just a lucrative sinecure. In 1621 he was admitted into the livery of the Grocers Company along with Thomas Tickner, paying 20 for the privilege.18
15 J. M. Nosworthy,A Note on John Heminge, The Library, 5th ser., 3 (1949): 28788; Grocers Wardens Accounts 15551578 (Guildhall Library MS 11571/6), fol. 473v, and MS 11571/7, fol. 220v. There is some confusion in the records of the Grocers Company, for a Iohn Hemynge. Late apprentice to Roger Gwyn was also made free of the Grocers on 5 November 1595, one week before the player John Heminges bound his rst apprentice (Guildhall Library MS 11571/8, fol. 503r). There is no record of a John Heminges being bound to Roger Gwyn, but a Iohn Herringe had been bound to Humphrey Westerne in 1587 and transferred to John Shere/Shore in 1593. This is unlikely to have been the player, who got married in 1588 and was a sharer in Stranges Men in 1593, since London apprentices were generally forbidden to marry. Most likely the 1595 record is a slip by the clerk for John Herring, perhaps because Heminges the player had recently been in Grocers Hall to prepare for binding his apprentice. 16 Mark Eccles, Shakespeare in Warwickshire (Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1961), 82. The connection to the Queens Men is strengthened by Hemingess grant of arms in 1629, which calls him of long tyme Servant to Queen Elizabeth of happie Memory, also to King James hir Royal Successor and to King Charles his Sonne (E. K. Chambers, The Elizabethan Stage, 4 vols. [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1923], 2:321). 17 Corporation of London, Repertory 28, fol. 311v; Corporation of London, Journal 27, fol. 350v (see also Mark Eccles, Elizabethan Actors II: EJ, Notes & Queries 236 [1991]: 45461, esp. 458); and Corporation of London Repertory 40, fol. 182r. 18 Grocers Orders of the Court of Assistants (Guildhall Library MS 11588/3), 190.
More pertinent for our purposes is the fact that, between 1595 and 1628 the records of the Grocers show Heminges binding ten apprentices. Most of these apprentices ended up as actors with the Chamberlains/Kings Men, and one of them explicitly stated that he had been trained in larte dune Stageplayer during his apprenticeship.19 Following is a chronological list of Hemingess apprentices, based on transcriptions originally made by Peter W. M. Blayney and subsequently checked by me at the Guildhall Library. For each apprentice I give the date of his binding, the length of his term, a citation to the binding record in the Grocers Wardens Accounts at the Guildhall Library, and a brief discussion of what we know about his stage career. Thomas Belte, bound on 12 November 1595 for nine years (MS 11571/8, fol. 508r). A T. Belt played a servant and Panthea (a female role) in The Seven Deadly Sins, the surviving plot of which was dated by W. W. Greg as belonging to Stranges Men in 1590. However, an impressive amount of circumstantial evidence indicates that this plot actually belonged to the Chamberlains Men around 159798, and in fact this record and the next one are key pieces of that evidence.20 This boy may have been the son of a Norwich city wait (i.e., a municipal musician) of the same name who with his wife and children was expelled from Norwich on 16 November 1594, almost exactly a year before Heminges bound Belte.21 Alexander Cooke, bound on 26 January 1597 for eight years; freed 22 March 1609 (MS 11571/8, fol. 545v). Cooke is known to have acted with the Chamberlains-Kings Men from at least 1603, and he refers to Heminges as his master in his will.22 He is generally taken to be the Saunder who played Queen Videna and Progne, wife of Tereus, in The Seven Deadly Sins; if so, he must have done so in 1597 or later. Cooke was freed as a Grocer on 22 March 1609 and bound Walter Haynes as his apprentice on 28 March 1610.23 He died in 1614. George Burgh, bound on 4 July 1610 for eight years (MS 11571/9, fol. 344r). This boy is probably the George Birch who married the daughter of Kings Man Richard Cowley in 1619 (just after his apprenticeship would have ended) and acted for the Kings Men between that date and 1625. He is probably also the Richard
19 See Corporation of London Record Oce, Mayors Court Original Bills, MC153, membrane 54. See also Bentley, Profession of Player, 122; and note 33 below. 20 See David Kathman,Reconsidering The Seven Deadly Sins, Early Theatre 7.1 (2004): 1344. 21 See David Galloway, ed., Records of Early English Drama: Norwich, 15401642 (Toronto and Bualo: U of Toronto P, 1984), 107. 22 PRO B10/311, dated 3 January 1614 and proved 4 May 1614. The will is printed by Honigmann and Brock, 9496. 23 See Guildhall Library MS 11571/9, fol. 291v (Cookes freedom); MS 11571/9, fol. 340v (Hayness binding).
Birche (otherwise unknown) who played Lady Politic Would-Be in Volpone and Doll Common in The Alchemist for the Kings Men sometime between 1616 and 1619.24 John Wilson, bound on 18 February 1611 for eight years; freed 29 October 1621 (MS 11571/9, fol. 385v). Born in Faversham, Kent, on 5 April 1595, Wilson was not quite sixteen when he was apprenticed to Heminges.25 He appears as Jacke Wilson in the Folio version of Much Ado About Nothing, playing Balthasar and singing a song; he also wrote many songs for the Kings Men beginning around 1614. He was freed as a Grocer on 29 October 1621, and ten months later, on 28 August 1622, he took his rst apprentice, Zachary Rowlee.26 On 21 October 1622, Wilson was appointed one of the waits of the City of London, and in 1635 he became a lutenist in the Kings Musicke, eventually taking his bachelors degree at Oxford in 1644 and becoming a professor of music there in 1656. Nicholas Crosse, bound on 25 May 1614 for ten years (MS 11571/10, fol. 111v). It is tempting to think that this boy was related to the Samuel Crosse listed in the Shakespeare First Folio as one of the principal actors in all these Playes. He may be the Nicholas Cross who was a chorister at St. Pauls in 1607, given that several members of the Kings Men had previously been choristers at St. Pauls and/or the Chapel Royal; and he is probably the Nick who played Barnavelts wife in a Kings Men production of Sir John Van Olden Barnavelt in August 1619.27 Richard Sharpe, bound on 21 February 1616 for eight years (MS 11571/10, fol. 198v). Sharpe played the title role in Websters The Duchess of Mal, according to the 1623 quartopresumably not in the original 1612 production but in the revival of 161923. The 1679 Beaumont and Fletcher folio lists him as a cast mem-
24 See G. E. Bentley, The Jacobean and Caroline Stage, 7 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 194168), 2:377; James A. Riddell,Some Actors in Ben Jonsons Plays, Shakespeare Studies 5 (1969): 28598. The annotator who wrote the name Richard Birche in a copy of the 1616 Jonson folio described by Riddell was probably not connected with the Kings Men and thus may have been mistaken about Birches rst name. He may have conated Birche and Richard Sharpe, for whom see below. 25 See Andrew Ashbee and David Lasocki, A Biographical Dictionary of English Court Musicians, 14851714 (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 1998), 1157; and Stanley Sadie, ed., The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2d ed., 30 vols. (New York: Grove, 2001), 27:423. Each of these sources contains some information that the other lacks, though neither is aware of Wilsons apprenticeship or his freedom of the Grocers. 26 Guildhall Library MS 11571/10, fol. 466r (Wilsons freedom); MS 11571/11, fol. 11r (Rowlees binding). Rowlee apparently never gained his freedom, but on 6 August 1633 Wilson freed another man, John Atkinson, for whom there is no record of apprenticeship. Atkinson may have replaced Rowlee at some point as Wilsons apprentice without being entered in the records. 27 Edwin Nungezer, A Dictionary of Actors and of Other Persons Associated with the Public Representation of Plays in England before 1642 (New Haven, CT: Yale UP, 1929), 108; Bentley, Jacobean and Caroline Stage, 2:516.
10
ber in thirteen plays performed by the Kings Men between 1616 and 1623 (almost exactly the period covered by his apprenticeship), though no specic roles are given. His rst known male role was Parthenius a free-man of Caesars in The Roman Actor, produced by the Kings Men in 1626; thenceforth he played male roles until his death on 25 January 1632.28 Thomas Holcombe, bound on 22 April 1618 for eight years (MS 11571/10, fol. 292v). The 1679 Beaumont and Fletcher folio lists Holcombe in the cast of six Kings Men plays between 1617 and 1622, though again without speciying any roles. However, a stage direction in the manuscript of Sir John Van Olden Barnavelt, performed by the Kings Men in August 1619, indicates that T: Holc played the Provosts wife.29 He was married some time before 24 July 1624, when he had a son baptized at St. Giles Cripplegate, but he was buried there on 1 September 1625, most likely a victim of the plague. It is interesting to note that John Shanks of the Kings Men (who was free of the Weavers) included Holcombe in 1635 among the other boys for whom he had paid his share of 200 since joining the company, even though Holcombe was formally bound to Heminges. This suggests that the sharers (or perhaps just the freemen) split the expense of obtaining talented boys, no matter to whom those boys were bound.30 Robert Pallant, bound on 9 February 1620 for eight years (MS 11571/10, fol. 381v). Pallant was baptized on 28 September 1605, son of the journeyman actor Robert Pallant who appears in the Seven Deadly Sins cast list alongside Belte and Cooke. The 1623 Duchess of Mal quarto lists the younger Pallant as playing Cariola, a female role, alongside Richard Sharpe. He appears in a few other records of the Kings Men in the 1620s.31 William Trigge, bound on 20 December 1625 for twelve years; freed 11 July 1632, perhaps by patrimony (MS 11571/11, fol. 139v). Trigge was one of the leading actors of female roles for the Kings Men in the late 1620s, playing at least ve female roles between 1626 and 1632.32 On 11 August 1631, ten months after John Hemingess death, Trigge petitioned the Mayors Court to be discharged from his indenture of apprenticeship, now in the hands of Hemingess son and executor,
and Caroline Stage, 2:56971. and Caroline Stage, 2:475. 30 See Glynne Wickham, Herbert Berry, and William Ingram, eds., English Professional Theatre, 15301660 (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2000), 225. 31 Bentley, Jacobean and Caroline Stage, 2:51920. As Bentley notes, there has been some confusion because the 1623 Duchess of Mal quarto brackets Pallants name with the Doctor and court ocers as well as Cariola, seeming to indicate that he played all these roles, a physical impossibility. The confusion probably arose when the compositor setting the quarto saw Pallants name next to Cariola and mistakenly thought it also belonged with the two adjacent names, which had no players listed. 32 These roles are listed by Bentley, Jacobean and Caroline Stage, 2:6046.
29 Bentley, Jacobean
28 Bentley, Jacobean
11
William. In the petition, written in legal French, Trigge says that he was apprenticed to Heminges pur apprendre larte que le dite John hennings adonc vsait . . . larte dune Stageplayer (to learn the art which the said John Heminges used . . . the art of a stageplayer), but that the contract should be void because he was only thirteen years old at the time, rather than the traditional minimum of fourteen.33 After William Heminges repeatedly failed to appear, the court granted Trigges petition on 21 June 1632, and three weeks later, on 11 July, Trigge claimed his freedom in the Grocers by patrimony as the son of Robert Trigge, deceased.34 He was still with the Kings Men in 1636 and with Beestons Boys in 1639, though no specic post-1632 roles are known for him. William Patricke, bound on 10 December 1628 for twelve years (MS 11571/11, fol. 275v). William Patricke is rst recorded as acting with the Kings Men in 1624. In 1626 he played a senator in The Roman Actor, and ve years later he played Demetrius, Rowland, and a Roman captain in Massingers Believe As You List.35 The apprentice may have been the son of the adult actor of the same name. Quite a few apprentice actors were sons of actors, including Robert Pallant the younger (noted above), Alexander Goughe (son of Robert Goughe of the Chamberlains and Queen Annes Men), and Robert Stratford (son of William Stratford of the Palsgraves Men). As this list illustrates, the boys whom Heminges bound as Grocers were primarily (perhaps exclusively) trained in the theater, and several of them played important roles for the Kings Men. Three of these apprenticesCooke, Wilson, and Triggewere freed as Grocers, and Cooke and Wilson went on to bind apprentices of their own. Several other members of the Kings Men were also freemen who bound apprentices in their livery companies, allowing us to reconstruct in large part the Kings Mens roster of boys, especially for the second decade of the seventeenth century. To have this information, while useful, is hardly typical. Not only did Heminges have an unusually long career with one company, but the prominence of the Kings
33 Corporation of London Record Oce, Mayors Court Original Bills, MC153, membrane 54. This record is cited inaccurately by Bentley, who does not mention the purpose of the petition and mistakenly says that it gives the date of Trigges apprenticeship as 20 December 1626 (Profession of Player, 122). The date is given as Le vnitiesm iour de december en lan du reigne Seigneur Charles le Roy dangleterre le premier (the twentieth day of December in the rst year of the reign of Lord Charles, King of England [i.e., 1625]). 34 Guildhall Library MS 11571/11, fol. 406r. There is an inconsistency here, for the Mayors Court petition describes Trigge as the son of Randall Trigge of Kent, clerk. Given the closeness of dates, I am inclined to think that both records refer to the same William Trigge, and that Randall Trigge was actually a legal guardian (perhaps an uncle). Such inconsistencies are not at all uncommon in records from this period. 35 Bentley, Jacobean and Caroline Stage, 2:52021.
12
Men means that more documentation survives about their personnel than about the personnel of other contemporary companies. For dozens of other freemen on the lower rungs of the pre-Restoration theater, information is more scanty. Nevertheless, livery-company records can provide many details about these men, their careers, and the relationships between livery companies and playing companies. William Perry is a case in point.
WILLIAM PERRY, CITIZEN AND DRAPER
William Perry, born around 1580, may be the William Parry (son of Thomas Parry, joiner) who was christened on 22 October 1581 at St. Mary Aldermanbury, London.36 At the age of twenty-two, on 16 July 1604, Perry was freed as a Draper after serving an apprenticeship with Henry Wollaston, and from 1605 to 1611 he paid quarterage dues to the Drapers while living in the Whitefriars district.37 Toward the end of this period, Perry bound his rst three apprentices as a Draper: Thomas Peirson, bound on 29 August 1610 for nine years; James Jones, bound on 10 July 1611 for nine years; and Charles Martin, bound on 20 November 1611 for eight years.38 Two boy companies tried to gain a foothold in Whitefriars during Perrys residence there: the Children of the Kings Revels in 16078, and the Children of the Queens Revels in 161011. Perry was probably aliated with at least the latter company. He was later associated with Philip Rosseter, a patentee of the Children of the Queens Revels, and on 11 November 1611 the player Edward Dutton posted bail in London Sessions Court for William Perrie, draper, of St. Dunstan in the West.39 In March 1613 the remnants of the second Whitefriars boy company were merged with Lady Elizabeths Players. A patent for the merged company was issued on 30 May 1613 and displayed at Coventry in March 1615.40 Perry is listed third on the 1613 patent after Joseph Townshend and Joseph Moore, the co-founders of
36 W. Bruce Bannerman, ed., The registers of St. Mary the Virgin, Aldermanbury, London, 3 vols. (London: John Whitehead and Son, 193135), 1:45, 57. 37 Company of Drapers, Freedom List 15671656 (MS +278/F.A. 1), p. 110; Quarterage Book 16051618 (MS +261/Q.B. 1), fol. 218v. All the Drapers records cited here are deposited at Drapers Hall in London and are quoted with the permission of the Company and its archivist, Penny Fussell. 38 Drapers Apprentice Bindings 16031658 (MS +287/F.B. 1), p. 193. Perry may well have bound more than these three apprentices, since this index (our only source for Drapers apprentice bindings between 1603 and 1615) is demonstrably incomplete. For example, only four of Ambrose Beelands seven apprentices are listed there. 39 Wickham, Berry, and Ingram, eds., 54763 (details of the two boy companies); Mark Eccles, Elizabethan Actors I: AD, Notes & Queries 236 (1991): 3849, esp. 47 (Duttons bail for Perry). 40 Andrew Gurr, The Shakespearean Playing Companies (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), 39899.
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Lady Elizabeths Players, and among the Boyes listed are James Jones and Charles Martin, two of Perrys apprentices.41 Jones is an interesting case; before being bound as a Draper to Perry in 1611, he had been apprenticed as a Goldsmith to Robert Armin of the Kings Men in 1608. Jones may have been lured or stolen away from Armin and the Kings Men by Perry, or he may have been transferred amicably. Armins play The Two Maids of Moreclacke was performed in 16078 by the children of the Kings Revels in Whitefriars, where Armin could have met Perry. Perry next appears as one of several players accused in 1616 by the Lord Chamberlain (William Herbert) of touring with fake patents, in Perrys case under the name and title of the Children of his Ma[jestys] Revels.42 However, on 31 October 1617 Herbert issued a warrant for Perry and his company to tour as the Children of Queen Annes Revels, and Perry continued to use this warrant through the mid-1620s. A copy made in 1624 names seven players besides Perry, four of whom (including Perrys apprentice James Jones) had also appeared in the 1613 patent for Lady Elizabeths Players. Perry was evidently touring with essentially the same personnel.43 On 5 September 1629 Perry was sworn a Groom of the Chamber in Ordinary, and thirteen days later he received a royal commission to form a company known as the Kings-Red Bull company, nominally based in York, which apparently toured as the Kings Players but played in the Red Bull when it was in London.44 It was in this context that Perry became involved in a dispute over the boy-player Stephen Hammerton, who played female roles in the early 1630s and later became a leading man with the Kings Men. On 12 June 1632 William Blagrave, Deputy Master of the Revels and conancier of the new Salisbury Court playhouse, led suit in the Court of Requests against Christopher Babham, previously an investor in Salisbury Court but now associated with the Kings Men at the Blackfriars.45 Blagrave claimed that one
of Early English Drama: Coventry, ed. R. W. Ingram (Toronto and Bualo: U of Toronto P, 1981), 394. This record was printed in E. K. Chambers,Elizabethan Stage Gleanings, Review of English Studies 1 (1925): 18283, with brackets (not in the original) that made it appear that Perry was one of the Boyes. This error was repeated by numerous later scholars, but in context it is clear that Perry is not listed as a boy. 42 Bentley, Jacobean and Caroline Stage, 1:178. 43 Gurr, 36364, provides excerpts from the various versions of this somewhat confusing patent. The full text of a version shown in 1624 is given in N. W. Bawcutt, The Control and Censorship of Caroline Drama (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), 3078. 44 For discussion of this rather shadowy company, which may have been more than one group, see Bentley, Jacobean and Caroline Stage, 2:52931; and Gurr, 44045. 45 The following description of the Blagrave-Babham dispute is based on G. E. Bentley, The Salisbury Court Theater and Its Boy Players, passim. The original bill and answer of the suit are now PRO REQ2681.
41 Records
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William Perry citizen and draper of London being possessed and interested of and in one Stephen Hammerton as his apprentice had, by a deed dated 15 October 1629, turned Hammerton over to Blagrave for the remaining nine years of the boys apprenticeship. But Blagrave charged Babham with stealing both Hammerton and the deed in the autumn of 1631, alleging that the boy (whose contract Blagrave valued at approximately 30) was being used for Babhams great gain and advantage. Babham replied that he knew nothing about an apprenticeship to Perry or a deed, and asserted that Hammerton was apprenticed to William Waverley, citizen and Merchant Taylor of London, who was allowing Hammerton to remain with Babham by his own good will. G. E. Bentley assumes that Babham was lying, but the Merchant Taylors records show that he was notat least, not entirely. On 5 December 1631 Stephen Hammerton, son of Richard Hammerton of Hellield, Yorkshire, gentleman, was apprenticed to William Waverley of the Strand, Merchant Taylor, for a term of eight years.46 But the Drapers records contain no trace of Hammerton; in fact there is no record of Perry binding any apprentices as Drapers after 161011, though he continued to act into the 1640s. Nevertheless, Hammerton had probably been contracted to Perry at one time, as Blagrave claimed. Hammerton came from Yorkshire, the nominal base of Perrys company; the date of the alleged deed, 15 October 1629, is less than a month after Perry received his royal commission; and the timing of Hammertons binding to Waverley agrees with Blagraves description of the theft. But Perry did not register Hammertons binding with the Drapers, whereas Babham had Hammerton formally bound in a livery company, by indenture enrolled with the Chamberlain of London according to the use and custom of the said city, on the assumption that such a binding would have more force than Perrys contract. The authorities apparently agreed, for in November 1632 Blagrave complained to the Lord Chamberlain that Hammerton was still with Babham and by him employed at the Blackfriars playhouse.47 Hammerton never returned to Salisbury Court but went on to a successful career with the Kings Men. This case is interesting for a number of reasons. It shows that freemen such as Perry did not always bind apprentices in their livery companies; Perry must have bound other apprentices besides Hammerton after 1611, but, as noted above, none of them were bound as Drapers. Presumably such informal binding was adequate for most of Perrys purposes, but in a case such as this one, involving a valu-
Taylors Apprentice Binding Book 16291635 (Guildhall Library MS 34038/10), p. 180; and Ordinary Court Minutes 16291637 (Guildhall Library MS 34018/2), n.p. 47 Bentley,The Salisbury Court Theater, 143.
46 Merchant
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able boy in a tug-of-war between two London playing companies, binding in a livery company seems to have been a practical necessity. The Hammerton case is also interesting because it shows a boy-player being formally bound to someone (Waverley) who was not an actor in the company. This is consistent with Ellis Worths report, quoted above, that the chief actors Did vsually bynde such boyes & youthes as Apprentices to themselfes or some others that were freemen of some trade or other (emphasis added). Theatrical apprenticeships of the Waverley type, in which a boy-player was formally apprenticed to a friendly third party who was not a player, were probably common. In some cases these friendly third parties were musicians with playhouse connections. Musicians had a livery company of their own, but virtually all of its records from before 1700 have been lost. However, quite a few professional musicians were freemen of other companies whose records do survive (most notably the Drapers and the Farriers), and those records show several musicians binding apprentices who appeared on the professional stage. For example, Ambrose Beeland was free of the Drapers and a violinist at Blackfriars, and at least one of his apprentices, Nicholas Underhill, acted with the Kings Men. Thomas Goodwin was a professional musician who was free of the Farriers; though he is not denitely known to have been a playhouse musician, one of his eight apprentices, Samuel Mannery, played a bawd for Prince Charless Men at Salisbury Court in 1631, suggesting that Goodwin may have been a performer there. Other evidence indicates that third-party freemen may have been paid for the use of their apprentices. Consider Philip Henslowe, who was free of the Dyers and called himself cittizen and Dyer of London in the deed of partnership for the Rose playhouse in 1587 and in various other legal documents.48 On 18 December 1597 Henslowe bowght my boye Jeames brystow of william agusten player for 8, and in 16001601 the Admirals Men owed Henslowe money for Bristows wages.49 A boy named James, presumably Bristow, played minor roles for the Admirals Men in 15971602. The early apprenticeship records of the Dyers are lost, but it appears that Bristow was apprenticed to Henslowe, who rented him out to the Admirals as a boy-player. It is not dicult to imagine a similar arrangement between William Waverley and the Kings Men with respect to Hammerton.
48 Carol Chillington Rutter, ed., Documents of the Rose Playhouse, rev. ed. (Manchester and New York: Manchester UP, 1999), 37; see also Henslowes Diary, ed. R. A. Foakes and R. T. Rickert, 2d ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2002), 29. 49 Foakes and Rickert, eds., 241, 118, 164, 167.
16
A SURVEY OF THEATRICAL FREEMEN, 15201642
The descriptions in this survey of forty-four freemen focus primarily on activities related to livery companies, but they also include enough other information to provide necessary context. (Fuller biographies and information about freemen excluded from this list will appear in my projected Biographical Dictionary of English Drama Before 1660.) This list is not exhaustive; a systematic search of all the companies records would certainly uncover more theatrical freemen and more apprentices bound to such freemen. For practical reasons I have restricted my list to ve overlapping categories: 1) Players in the major London companies. Virtually every pre-Restoration playing company in London had at least one freeman in its ranks at any given time, and the leading companies generally had more; most were sharers. I have also included some men who did not gain their freedom until after retiring from the stage. 2) Playhouse musicians. As noted above, many musicians employed in the playhouses were freemen, and their apprentices sometimes appeared onstage. See the entries for John Adson (Musician), Ambrose Beeland and Nicholas Underhill (Drapers), and Jerey Collins and Thomas Goodwin (Farriers). 3) Leaders of touring companies. Unlike the players in London companies, these men did not always bind apprentices in their livery companies, as we saw in the case of William Perry; even so, that so many of them were freemen is signicant. 4) Leaders of boy companies. Here, too, boys were not formally bound in livery companies, because the standard length of an apprenticeship contract in the boy companies was three years, below the seven-year minimum required by the 1562 statute. Nevertheless, these leaders status as freemen was seen as important. The contracts of Thomas Kendall and Martin Slater make a point of calling them citizens. 5) Playwrights. Professional playwrights came from a variety of backgrounds, but quite a few of them were freemen, including Lording Barry, Thomas Drew, John Heywood, Ben Jonson, Anthony Munday, and John Webster. Of these, at least Drew, Heywood, and Jonson bound apprentices in their livery companies, and it is tempting to wonder whether those apprentices were used for theatrical purposes. John Adson, Musician (15871640). Playhouse musician and actor. Adson was baptized on 24 January 1587 in Watford, Northamptonshire.50 By 1614 he had become free of the Company of Musicians, for he was described as citizen and musician when he was appointed a city wait of London on 23 May. The early
Except where otherwise noted, this account of Adsons life is based on Ashbee and Lasocki, 810; and Eccles,Actors I, 3839.
50
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records of the Musicians do not survive, but Adson appears to have been a member in good standing for the rest of his life. He described himself as citizen and musician in a Chancery deposition of 1623, and when his son Roger was apprenticed as a Draper in 1631 to Ambrose Beeland, the elder Adson was described as Civis et Musitian London (citizen and musician of London).51 By the 1630s, and probably earlier, Adson was a musician and sometime actor for the Kings Men; in 1634 he appeared as an invisible spirit in Heywood and Bromes The Late Lancashire Witches, and the same year he was one of the Blackfriars musicians who performed in Shirleys masque The Triumph of Peace.52 John Alleyn, Innholder (c. 155596). Actor, investor. John Alleyn was the elder brother of the famous actor Edward Alleyn. Their father Edward, a porter to Queen Elizabeth and a freeman of the Company of Innholders, died in 1570, when John was about fteen and Edward four.53 The following year the lord mayor and aldermen of London, sitting as the Court of Orphans (charged with providing for the underage children of deceased freemen), took recognizances from four citizens for the portions and legacies left by Edward Alleyn, citizen and innholder, for his sons John and Edward. John received his portion in 1576, and Edward received his in 1587, soon after he turned twenty-one.54 At some point in the late 1570s John Alleyn became a freeman of the Innholders, most likely by patrimony; he was described as an inholder in 1580 and 1593, and as ree of the company of Inholders of london in 1592.55 He may have been an actor, since he was described as a servant of the Lord Admiral in 1589, and he was certainly involved in the nancial aairs of the Admirals Men along with Edward.56
Bindings 16151634 (MS +288/F.B. 2). Several other playhouse musicians were also freemen of the Musicians, though the loss of the companys records makes identication dicult. Rowland Rubbidge, who played the violin in Prince Henrys masque Oberon in 1611, was one of fourteen assistants named when the Musicians received their royal charter in 1604; see Ashbee and Lasocki, 97677. (Honigmann and Brock print a transcription of Rubbidges will [20].)William Saunders, who was with the Kings Men in 1624, was called Citizen and Musician when he was appointed a London wait in 1634; see Ashbee and Lasocki, 98587. E. K. Chambers suggested that Augustine Phillips of the Chamberlains-Kings Men may have been free of the Musicians, since in his will Phillips bequeathed musical instruments to his late Aprentice Samuel Gilbourne and his Aprentice James Sands, both known to have performed with the Kings Men (Chambers, William Shakespeare, 85; and Honigmann and Brock, 7275). This is an intriguing hypothesis that will probably never be proved unless new evidence comes to light. 53 An excellent account of the elder Edward Alleyn and the early life of his sons appears in S. P. Cerasano,Edward Alleyns Early Years: His Life and Family, Notes & Queries 232 (1987): 23743. 54 Mark Eccles,Edward Alleyn in London Records, Notes & Queries 235 (1990): 16668. 55 Eccles,Elizabethan Actors II, 455. 56 See Nungezer, 12.
52
51 Drapers Apprentice
18
Edward Alleyn would also have been entitled to claim his freedom in the Innholders by patrimony, but there is no record of whether he did so, as the companys early records do not survive. That he is never referred to as an innholder in any extant document proves nothing, since Englishmen of high social standing rarely identied themselves as freemen. (Alleyns step-father-in-law, Philip Henslowe, was free of the Dyers but is routinely called gentleman in documents of the period and even in his will.) We know that Alleyn took apprentices, since the boy-player John Pig named Alleyn as his mayster, and mr allens boy played a Moorish page in The Battle of Alcazar for the Admirals Men.57 Robert Armin, Goldsmith (c. 15681615). Actor. On 13 October 1581, Armin was apprenticed for a term of eleven years to John Lonyson, a London Goldsmith who was a native of Armins birthplace of Lynn, Norfolk.58 But Lonyson died the following year, and Armin was re-apprenticed to John Kettlewood for nine years beginning at Michaelmas 1582. He was not freed before becoming a professional player, but on 27 January 1604, after he had been a member of the Kings Men for nearly ve years, Armin appeared before the Goldsmiths Court and was sworn a freeman of the company. On 15 July 1608 Armin bound James Jones, son of Thomas Jones of Kreinton, Huntingdonshire, for an apprenticeship of ten years.59 A player of that name later appears with Lady Elizabeths Players in 1613 and with the Children of the Queens Revels in 1624but, as noted above, that James Jones was the apprentice of William Perry, either lured away from Armin or transferred amicably. Armin called himself Cittizen and Goldsmithe of London in his will, and is called ree of the Gouldsmithes and a Player in the record of his burial at St. Botolph Aldgate on 30 November 1615.60 Lording Barry, Fishmonger (15801629). Playwright, leader of boy company. Barry was the son of Nicholas Barry, a freeman of the Fishmongers. In 16078, he was one of several partners who borrowed money to invest in the Children of the Kings Revels at the new Whitefriars playhouse, a venture in which Martin Slater, Thomas Woodford, and numerous other freemen were involved. Barry also wrote plays for the company, including Ram Alley and (probably) The Family of Love.
W. W. Greg, Dramatic Documents from the Elizabethan Playhouses (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1931), 51, 61. S. P. Cerasano, the leading authority on Edward Alleyns life, doubts that he was a freeman like his brother. 58 Goldsmiths Apprentice Book 1, p. 32 (29), rst noted by Emma Denkinger,Actors Names in the Registers of St. Botolph Aldgate, Proceedings of the Modern Language Association 41 (1926): 91109, esp. 96. An imposing portrait of Lonyson, dated 1565, now hangs at Goldsmiths Hall. 59 See Jane Beleld, Robert Armin, Citizen and Goldsmith of London, Notes & Queries 225 (1980): 15859; and Goldsmiths Apprentice Book 1, fol. 180v. 60 Beleld, 159; see also the transcription of Armins will (Guildhall Library MS 9052/4) in Honigmann and Brock, 9698.
57
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When the venture failed and creditors came calling in mid-1608, Barry ed London and joined a gang of pirates based in southwest Ireland, and while most of his compatriots were caught and executed in December 1609, Barry escaped punishment.61 At some point before 1610, Barry claimed his freedom in the Fishmongers by patrimony, for he is listed among the yeomanry in the earliest surviving Fishmongers quarterage book, from 161011. He continued to pay dues to the Fishmongers through 162022, sometimes being specied as ls N Barry.62 Barry stopped paying quarterage dues in 162224, but he apparently lived until 1629, when his will was proved. Ambrose Beeland, Draper (c. 1597c. 1677). Playhouse musician. Beeland was apprenticed around 1610 to Thomas Stephenson, a Draper who was a musician by profession, and was made free of the Drapers on 3 September 1619, one day before he married Frances Bailey.63 For at least the next fteen years he was employed by the Kings Men as a violinist: he was listed among the employees of the Kings Men in 1624, and ten years later he was one of the Blackfriars musicians who were to play in James Shirleys masque The Triumph of Peace (1634). He became a city wait of London in 1631 and a royal musician from 1640 to 1674. Although Beeland worked as a professional musician for fty-ve years, he continued to pay quarterly dues as a member of the Drapers during that entire time. Among his nine apprentices, Nicholas Underhill was a musician and minor actor at the Blackfriars and later at the Cockpit, and Roger Adson (bound 4 May 1631 for fteen years) was the son of fellow Blackfriars musician John Adson, who was free of the Company of Musicians.64 At least two of Beelands fellow apprentices under Stephenson also became free of the Drapers and worked as playhouse musicians. Thomas Hunter, the son of Matthew Hunter, musician, of Lewes, Sussex, was apprenticed to Stephenson for ten years from 16 October 1616; he was freed on 26 March 1628. Hunter bound two apprentices as Drapers: Richard Worthington on 9 September 1629 and John
The most complete account of Barrys life is C. LEstrange Ewen, Lording Barry, Poet and Pirate (Printed for the Author, 1938), which was abstracted in C. LEstrange Ewen, Lording Barry, Dramatist, Notes & Queries 174 (1938): 11112. The details of the Whitefriars theatrical ventures, and the ensuing lawsuits, are described by William Ingram, The Playhouse as an Investment, 16071614: Thomas Woodford and Whitefriars, Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England 2 (1985): 20930. 62 Fishmongers Quarterage Book 16101642 (Guildhall Library MS 5578A/1), fols. 12r, 28v, 43v, r 61 , 75v, and 94r. 63 Drapers Freedom List 15671656 (MS +278/F.B. 1), p. 168. For Beelands marriage to Bailey, and the other facts in this paragraph not cited directly from the Drapers records, see the very complete account in Ashbee and Lasocki, 13841. 64 Drapers Apprentice Bindings 16151634 (MS +288/F.B. 2), n.p.
61
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Norvaile on 11 April 1632, neither of whom was freed. John Levasher, the son of Thomas Levasher, instrument-maker, of Bristol, was apprenticed to Stephenson for seven years from 19 February 1623 and was freed on 10 March 1630. His only apprentice was his own brother Thomas, bound for seven years on 25 January 1632 but never freed. Both Hunter and Levasher were listed among the Cockpit musicians scheduled to appear in The Triumph of Peace in 1634. Hunter paid quarterage dues to the Drapers in 162931; Levasher paid dues in 163436, after which he was listed as gone beyond sea.65 John Bugge, Apothecary (c. 15961640). Actor. On 14 December 1620 John Buggs was sworn a freeman of the Society of Apothecaries, which had been chartered three years earlier.66 On 10 January 1629 he was sworn a Groom of the Chamber in Ordinary as one of the Queen of Bohemias Players, and on 4 March of the same year Andrew son of reputed wife of Andrew Bugge Chirurgeon was christened at St. Giles Cripplegate.67 On 7 February 1631 the College of Physicians accused various people of pratising Physique ag[ainst] ye Charter of the Colledge, including Bugges one of the Queen of Bohemias Players sometimes an Apothecare.68 Bugge bound six apprentices in the Apothecaries, and the last three of these were bound during the period when he was active in the Queen of Bohemias Players: William Walley, son of William of Middlewich, Cheshire (bound on 11 May 1629); George Browne, son of George, parish clerk, of London (bound on 25 March 1630); and William Bartlett, son of Robert, gentleman, of Cherington, Wiltshire (turned over by Bugge to Mathias Bowche on 8 June 1630).69 Bugge is mentioned in several other records from the 1630s, including a bequest by Richard Beneld of Grays Inn (a friend of numerous players) to my lovinge freind John Bugges Doctor in Phisicke.70 Bugge made his own will on 23 May 1640 as Johannis Buggs in medicinis Drs, leaving all his goods to his (unnamed) wife and children, and the will was proved on 7 July of that year.71 James Burbage, Joiner (c. 15301597). Actor, playhouse-builder. Burbage was originally a joiner by profession, and thus must have been a freeman of the Joiners,
Drapers Apprentice Bindings 16151634 (MS +288/F.B. 2) (all ve bindings); Drapers Freedom List 15671656 (MS +278/F.B. 1), pp. 194 (Hunters freedom), 198 (Levashers freedom); Drapers Quarterage Book 162842 (MS +260/Q.B. 3), p. 149. 66 Society of Apothecaries, Court Minutes 16171651 (Guildhall Library MS 8200/1, on microlm), p. 48 67 Bentley, Jacobean and Caroline Stage, 2:393. 68 Bentley, Jacobean and Caroline Stage, 2:393. 69 Guildhall Library MS 8200/1, pp. 204, 226, 233; indexed in Patrick Wallis, London Apprentices, Volume 32: Apothecaries Company, 16171669 (London: Society of Genealogists, 2000), 3, 7, 43. 70 Bentley, Jacobean and Caroline Stage, 2:394. 71 PRO B11/183.
65
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though the early records of the company are lost. By 1572 he was acting with Leicesters Men, but the description of him as a joyner in the Theatres 1576 lease suggests that he maintained his membership in the company even after becoming a full-time player and theatrical entrepreneur.72 As with Edward Alleyn, it is at least possible that Jamess son Richard claimed his freedom in the Joiners by patrimony, as he was entitled to do at any time after 1589. The two Kings Men who witnessed Richard Burbages 1619 will, Nicholas Tooley and Richard Robinson, had probably also been his apprentices: Tooley referred to my late M[aste]r Richard Burbage in his own will of 1623; and Robinson, who as a boy had played female roles for the Kings Men, later married Burbages widow, Winifred, on 31 October 1622.73 Richard Burbage is generally referred to as gentleman in contemporary documents, but the same is true of many freemen who achieved high social standing. In any case, it is an interesting fact that the eras two most famous players, Alleyn and Richard Burbage, were the sons of freemen, whether or not they were freemen themselves.74 Andrew Cane, Goldsmith (1589?c. 1658). Actor. Theater historians have known for many years that Cane was a goldsmith, but the records of the Goldsmiths Company provide much valuable new information.75 Cane was the son of Robert Cane, butcher, of Windsor, and in 1602 he was apprenticed for ten years to his own brother Richard, who had become free of the Goldsmiths two years earlier.76
Ingram gives a thorough summary of Burbages early career and his connection to the Joiners; see The Business of Playing, 95100. 73 For Tooleys will, see Honigmann and Brock, 12428; and for Robinsons marriage to Winifred Burbage, see Mary Edmond, Yeomen, Citizens, Gentlemen, and Players: The Burbages and Their Connections in Elizabethan Theater: Essays in Honor of S. Schoenbaum, R. B. Parker and S. P. Zitner, eds. (Newark: U of Delaware P, 1996), 42. It was not uncommon for apprentices to marry their masters widows; Philip Henslowe did so, as did Richard Field, the printer of Shakespeares Venus and Adonis and Rape of Lucrece. 74 Playwrights and players who were sons of freemen but not denitely known to have been freemen themselves include Thomas Kyd (son of a Scrivener), Thomas Middleton (son of a Bricklayer), Thomas Lodge (son of a Grocer), George Peele (son of a Salter), Gabriel Spencer (son of a Pewterer), Nicholas Tooley (son of a Leatherseller), and William Ecclestone (son of a Merchant Taylor). 75 Most of this new information was rst brought to my attention by John Astington in his paper for the 2002 Shakespeare Association of America meeting,A Man to Double Business Bound: The Career of Andrew Cane, forthcoming in Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England. I subsequently conrmed this information and noted some further details at Goldsmiths Hall with the help of the librarian there, Mr. David Beasley. The best previous account of Canes career is found in Bentley, Jacobean and Caroline Stage, 2:398401. See also Bentley,The Troubles of a Caroline Acting Troupe: Prince Charless Company, HLQ 41 (1978): 21749; and William Ingram, Arthur Savill, Stage Player, Theatre Notebook 37 (1983): 2122. 76 Goldsmiths Apprentice Book 1, fol. 142r.
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Andrew Cane became free of the Goldsmiths on 25 January 1611, and on 7 January 1612 he bound his rst apprentice, John Hilton, son of Henry Hilton of Fulham, Middlesex.77 Unlike many of the freemen listed here, there is considerable evidence that Cane practiced the craft of his company for more than forty years, keeping a shop and making silverware. By 1622 Cane was also among the chief players at the Phoenix (a venue associated with Lady Elizabeths Players), and soon afterwards he was acting with the Palsgraves Men at the Fortune. Between 1621 and 1633, as his playing career ourished, Cane bound ve apprentices. Three of these are unknown to stage historians: Thomas Stayne, son of Rowland Stayne, armorer, of London (bound on 20 July 1621 for eight years); Hugh Pusey, son of Hugh Pusey, gentleman, of Pusey, Berkshire (bound on 22 June 1627, retroactively from Christmas 1626, for eight years); and Thomas Gibbins, son of Christopher Gibbins, shoemaker, of Hurly, Berkshire (bound on 22 November 1633 for nine years).78 This gap in scholarly knowledge is hardly surprising, given that only one cast list from Canes companies has survived. The list is for Shakerley Marmions Hollands Leaguer (performed 1631, printed 1632), and it shows Canes two other apprentices, John Wright and Arthur Savill, playing female roles. Wright, son of John Wright, baker, of St. Giles Cripplegate (bound on 27 November 1629 for eight years), played Milliscent; and Savill, son of Cordaile Savill, gentleman, of Clerkenwell (bound on 5 August 1631 for eight years), played the gentlewoman Quartilla.79 As Wright testied in 1655, he had acted throughout his apprenticeship, raising the possibilityI would say the probabilitythat Canes three other apprenticesStayne, Pusey, and Gibbins were also boy-players. During the Interregnum, Cane bound three more apprentices: Nathaniel Cooper (on 26 October 1649 for seven years), George Barrett (on 1 July 1653 for eight years), and John Winnall (on 17 March 1654 for eight years).80 Because the playhouses were ocially closed, these apprentices were probably trained as goldsmiths; but Cane continued to perform surreptitiously, so at least some of these boys might have appeared onstage.81 Jerey Collins, Farrier (. 162440). Playhouse musician. Collins was listed in 1624 as one of the Kings Men at the Blackfriars, and in 1634 he was among the Cockpit
Goldsmiths Court Book, fol. 702r; Apprentice Book 1, fol. 201r. Goldsmiths Apprentice Book 1, fols. 249v, 279v, and 321r. Pusey was eventually freed in 1635. 79 Goldsmiths Apprentice Book 1, fols. 294v and 305r. Both apprentices were eventually freed (Savill in 1639, Wright in 1646), and their careers are described more fully below. 80 Goldsmiths Apprentice Book 2, fols. 33r, 55r, and 60r. Cooper was freed by Cane in 1656, but the other two appear not to have been freed. 81 See Bentley, Jacobean and Caroline Stage, 2:401.
78
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musicians scheduled to appear in The Triumph of Peace.82 A freeman of the Farriers, Collins bound ve apprentices in that company: Henry Bland, son of Henry, yeoman, of Ely, Cambridgeshire (on 19 December 1626 for eight years); Roger Thomson, son of Henry, barber, of Ely, Cambridgeshire (on 1 May 1630 for nine years); David Browne, son of Thomas, deceased yeoman, of St. Dacre, Derbyshire (on 6 June 1634 for eleven years); Francis Ingram, son of Simon, gardener, of Chichester, Sussex (on 25 June 1640 for eight years); and John Zealand, son of Lawrence, deceased musician, of Haverhill, Suolk (on 24 November 1640 for seven years).83 William Crane, Mercer (d. 1545). Leader of boy company. Crane became a Gentleman of the Chapel Royal from 1506 and performed in numerous pageants in the early years of Henry VIIIs reign. Following the death of William Cornish in 1523, Crane became acting master of the Children of the Chapel Royal, and he was ocially appointed as Cornishs successor on 12 May 1526. Two months earlier, on 21 March, Crane had also been made a freeman of the Company of Mercers at the request of Henry VIII. Their proximity implies that there may have been a connection between the two appointments. Crane was reimbursed 3 6s 8d on 15 June 1531 for his expenses while traveling to recruit choirboys for the Chapel, and between 1528 and 1541 he was regularly paid for performing plays at court with the Children of the Chapel.84 Thomas Downton, Vintner (d. 1625). Actor. Downton appears often in Henslowes diary and the Henslowe papers, which also contain numerous mentions of his boys. One of these boys, Thomas Parsons, played a Fury in The Battle of Alcazar and several female parts in 1 Tamar Cam (acted 1602).85 Downton continued as a sharer in the Admirals-Princes-Palsgraves Men for more than two decades and was still a leader of the company in 1617. On 13 February 1618 Downton paid the considerable sum of 11 13s 4d to become free of the Vintners by redemption, and two days later he married his third wife, Jane Easton, widow of Oliver Easton, Vintner, and owner of the Red Cross tavern.86 Over the next seven years Downton bound three apprentices as Vintners: Jerey Langworth on 7 May 1618, Charles Grafton on 5 June 1622, and Joseph Beverton on 6 October 1624.87 There are indi-
See Bentley, Jacobean and Caroline Stage, 2:409; Andrew J. Sabol, New Documents on Shirleys Masque The Triumph of Peace, Music and Letters 47 (1966): 1026, esp. 25. 83 FarriersApprentice Bindings (Guildhall Library MS 5526/1), pp. 58, 76 (no numbering after p. 79). 84 For a very thorough account of Cranes life, see Ashbee and Lasocki, 31214. 85 See Greg, 50. 86 Vintners Freemens Book 2 (Guildhall Library MS 15211/2), p. 146; Bentley, Jacobean and Caroline Stage, 2:426. 87 Vintners Freemens Book 2 (Guildhall Library MS 15211/2), pp. 147, 168, and 186. For more information about Easton and Downton, see Eccles, Actors I, 46; and Guildhall Library MS 15219/2, fol. 188r, which contains all three apprentices autographs.
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cations that Downton gave up playing at the time of his marriage to Easton and became a practicing vintner, so these boys were probably not apprenticed to act. That Downton gained his freedom by redemption (rather than translation) means that he was presumably not a freeman during his playing days and thus that his boys mentioned in Henslowes diary were probably not bound in a livery company. However, it is possible that they were formally bound to some third party (as Stephen Hammerton was) and that Downton was their master within the Admirals Men. Downtons career as a vintner was cut short by the plague of 1625: on 28 July his apprentice Jerey Langworth was buried at St. Giles Cripplegate, and on 5 August Downton made his will, describing himself as Vintner and making no mention of theatrical aairs.88 The will was proved two weeks later on 19 August. Thomas Drew, Fishmonger (c. 1586c. 1627). Actor and playwright. Drew acted with Queen Annes Men starting in 1612, but by his own account he left the company at Christmas 1618, as it was rapidly disintegrating due to nancial pressure and internal dissension. Ten months later, on 11 October 1619, Drew claimed his freedom in the Fishmongers by patrimony, being described as the son of Georg Drewe deceased.89 When he testied about Queen Annes Men in the Chancery suit of Worth v. Baskerville on 18 November 1623, he described himself as 37 years old and free of the Fishmongers. Three weeks after his testimony, on 8 December, Drew bound his only apprentice: Richard King, son of William King, haberdasher, deceased, of London.90 It is not clear whether Drew continued to act after leaving Queen Annes Men, but he did apparently write plays for the Palsgraves Men at the Fortune; so King may have been apprenticed for theatrical purposes. Drew appears in the Fishmongers quarterage book for 162224, but in the list for 162628 he is marked mort (dead) after having paid 2s, indicating that he probably died late in 1626 or early in 1627.91 James Dunstone. See James Tunstall. John Dutton, Weaver (c. 15481614). Actor. Lawrence Dutton, Weaver (. 157198). Actor. On 26 January 1573, John and Lawrence Dutton, Weavers, and Thomas Goe (or Goughe), citizen and Barber-Surgeon, of London (all three actually players by profession) sued Rowland Broughton in Chancery for failing to provide plays for
Bentley, Jacobean and Caroline Stage, 2:426; and Honigmann and Brock, 14647. Downtons will is PRO B10/425. 89 Fishmongers Presentment Book 1 (Guildhall Library MS 5576/1), fol. 34v. 90 Sisson,Notes, 27; Fishmongers Presentment Book 1 (Guildhall Library MS 5576/1), fol. 52v. For a summary of Drews career as a playwright, see Bentley, Jacobean and Caroline Stage, 3:28086. 91 Fishmongers Quarterage Book 161042 (Guildhall Library MS 5578A/1), fol. 140r. The list covers the period from Midsummer 1626 (24 June) to Annunciation Day 1628 (25 March).
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their company as he had contracted to do the previous June.92 Lawrence Dutton and Thomas Goe had been paid for court performances by Sir Robert Lanes Men during the 157172 Christmas season, but by the next Christmas season they were under the patronage of the earl of Lincoln; on 10 February 1573, two weeks after their lawsuit against Broughton was led, a payment for court performances was made to Laurence Dutton srunte to therle of Lincoln.93 Andrew Gurr has reasonably suggested that the company transferred from Lanes to Lincolns patronage when the Act of Vagabonds, published 29 June 1572, required players to have a patron with at least the rank of baron.94 The contract with Broughton, dated 2 June, may have been connected with this reorganization. It specically mentions part of the wages or stipend of all such boys as shall be needful for players in and abouts the same play and plays.95 That it makes a point of mentioning the three plaintis freedom is also suggestive. Sixteenth-century freedom and apprenticeship records for the Weavers have not survived, but it appears that both Duttons were freemen of the company throughout their playing careers.96 They led various playing companies in the 1570s, and belonged to the Queens Men in the 1580s. In the 1590s, a few years before he apparently quit the stage, John Dutton was active in the Company of Weavers, being elected warden (159192), assistant to the liveries (1594), second baili (1594), rst baili (1595), and auditor of the accounts (15961600, 16031608). He is called John Dutton, citizen and Weaver, in legal documents of 1602, 1606, and 1608; he died in 1614.97 Lawrence Dutton also apparently retired from acting in the 1590s, but he did not become active in company business, instead encountering nancial diculties and trying his hand at various shady pursuits. In 1596 he was imprisoned as a result of a long-defaulted loan, but he jumped bail and left several sureties, including his brother John, to pay his debts. He is not traceable after 1598.98
92 See R. Mark Benbow,Dutton and Goe versus Broughton: A Disputed Contract for Plays in the 1570s, REED Newsletter 2 (1981): 39. 93 Chambers, Elizabethan Stage, 4:147. 94 See Gurr, 170. 95 Benbow, 5. 96 See Eccles,Actors I, 4749; and William Ingram,Laurence Dutton, Stage Player: Missing and Presumed Lost, Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England 14 (2001): 12243. As Ingram notes, the evidence identifying the Weaver Lawrence Dutton with the actor of the same name is fairly clear, whereas the comparable evidence for John Dutton is strongly suggestive but has some inconsistencies, as such evidence from this period often does. 97 Ingram,Laurence Dutton, 125; Eccles,Actors I, 4748. 98 The basics of Lawrence Duttons activities were rst reported by Eccles (Actors I, 4849), but Ingram provides much more detail and context in his 2001 essay on Dutton.
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Richard Errington, Pewterer (c. 1577c. 1638). Actor. Errington rst appears among the membership lists of the Pewterers in 1609, and his position at the end of the list suggests that he had only recently become free.99 He probably claimed his freedom by patrimony, since he does not appear to have been apprenticed as a Pewterer. In 1622 Errington shows up in Norwich as the leader of his Ma[jestys] Company of Players.100 In a 1627 deposition following a drunken riot outside a playhouse in Ludlow, Shropshire, Errington described himself as Richard Errington, of the Citty of London, pewterer, aged l(tie) [50] yeares or thereabout and one of the Company of his Ma[jestys] . . . players.101 In 1631, he was at Reading leading a company with fellow Pewterer Ellis Guest, but in 1636 he was with William Daniels and the traveling Players of the Revels. He continued to appear in the Pewterers membership lists through 1637. Henry Evans, Scrivener (c. 15431608). Leader of boy companies. Evans was apprenticed as a Scrivener to Wilfred Lutye in 1561, and on 26 August 1567 he was made free of the Scriveners, or Writers of the Court Letter.102 In the 1580s Evans was a key gure in the theatrical activities of both Pauls Boys and the Children of the Chapel, where he was a lessee of the rst Blackfriars playhouse.103 In 1600 he was one of the prime movers in the revived Children of the Chapel at the second Blackfriars playhouse, leasing the property from Richard Burbage. He was forced out of the companys day-to-day operations in 1602 but continued to exert his inuence behind the scenes, possibly until his death in 1608.104 Thomas Goodale, Mercer (c. 1557after 1610). Actor. Goodale was born sometime around 1557, was married in 157879, and was with Berkeleys Men in 1581.105
Pewterers Register of the Livery and Yeomanry 15701677 (Guildhall Library MS 7095/1, unpaginated and unfoliated). An Andrew Errington, possibly a brother, appears in 1615 but is marked mort (dead) in 1623. 100 Bentley, Jacobean and Caroline Stage, 2:43132. Except where otherwise noted, this is the source of my information about Erringtons playing career. 101 Records of Early English Drama: Shropshire, ed. J. Alan B. Somerset, 2 vols. (Toronto, Bualo, London: U of Toronto P, 1994), 2:110. 102 See M. E. Smith, Personnel at the Second Blackfriars: Some Biographical Notes, Notes & Queries 223 (1978): 44145, esp. 444. Evanss autograph subscription to the oath, dated 26 August 1567, is in Guildhall Library MS 5370, fol. 36v. 103 Roma Ball, in The Choir-Boy Actors of St. Pauls Cathedral (Emporia State Research Studies [1962]: 516, esp. 11), summarizes the activities of the childrens companies in the 1580s. A concise summary of the early boy companies is given by Gurr, 21829. 104 James Forse, Extortion in the Name of Art in Elizabethan England: The Impressment of Thomas Clifton for the Queens Chapel Boys, Theatre Survey 31 (1990): 16576; and Smith, Personnel, give details of Evanss career with the second Blackfriars Boys. 105 He gave his age as forty-two in 1598, implying a birthdate of 1556, but as forty-ve in 1604, implying a birthdate of 1559; see Eccles,Actors II, 456. Such discrepancies are actually quite common in depositions of the time, since many people were not sure exactly how old they were.
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His stage career after that is known only from his being designated a player in parish registers of 1593 and 1594, and from the presence of his name in two famous theatrical manuscripts: Sir Thomas More, in which he played a messenger; and The Seven Deadly Sins, in which he played four minor roles. He was identied as a mercer in a 1593 bond, along with the players John Alleyn and Robert Lee, and described himself as free of the company of mercers in lawsuits of 1598 and 1604.106 The player was presumably the son of the Thomas Goodale who was freed as a Mercer in 1555 after being apprenticed to John Ellyote and who was buried at St. Giles Cripplegate in 1588. The only other man of this name in the Mercers records was freed in 1611/12 by patrimony as the son of Thomas Goodale, but the late date makes it more likely that this second Thomas Goodale was the son of the player, whose own freedom somehow went unrecorded.107 Thomas Goodwin, Farrier (. 161934). Musician. Like Jerey Collins, Goodwin was a professional musician who was free of the Farriers, and he bound eight apprentices in that company between 1619 and 1632. One of these was Samuel Mannery, bound on 1 August 1629 for nine years, the son of Nicholas Mannery, deceased gentleman of London. In 1631 Samuel Mannery played a bawd in a production of Shakerley Marmions Hollands Leaguer given by Prince Charless Men at Salisbury Court. He was married in 1638, the year his apprenticeship ended, and was still acting the following year.108 We have no record of the musicians employed in the Salisbury Court playhouse, but Goodwins binding of Mannery suggests that he was one of them. Three of Goodwins other apprentices were eventually freed as Farriers and also became prominent musicians. John Yockney, son of Thomas Yockney, shoemaker, of Longbridge Deverill, Wiltshire (bound on 24 May 1624 for nine years), became a royal musician and bound at least eight apprentices of his own between 1635 and his death in 1662; Marmaduke Wright, son of William Wright, musician, of Old Street, Middlesex (bound on 13 February 1626 for seven years), became a London wait who bound seven apprentices between 1632 and 1664; and William Young, son of Thomas
Greg, 4546; Eccles,Actors II, 45556. The Seven Deadly Sins is usually taken to be a play of Stranges Men around 1590, but, as noted above under Thomas Belte and Alexander Cooke, a variety of evidence indicates that it is a Chamberlains Men play from 159798. 107 List of the Members of the Mercers Company from 1343, pp. 198 and 202; and Guildhall Library MS 6419/1. The player did have a son named Thomas baptized in 1591 at St. Leonard Shoreditch, but this child was buried in 1593 at St. Botolph Aldgate as Thomas goodaul sonne to Thomas goodaul a player (Eccles,Actors II, 455). All Mercers records cited here are deposited at Mercers Hall in London, and are quoted with the permission of the Company and its archivist, Ursula Carlyle. 108 Farriers Apprentice Bindings (Guildhall Library MS 5526/1), p. 74; Bentley, Jacobean and Caroline Stage, 2:506.
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Young, musician, of Ripon, Yorkshire (bound on 9 February 1632 for eight years), also became a royal musician and bound at least two apprentices between 1660 and 1663.109 Thomas Goughe, Barber-Surgeon (. 157288). Actor. As noted above, Goughe (or Goe) was a payee for a court performance by Sir Robert Lanes Men in the 157172 Christmas season, and he was the third plainti (alongside the Duttons) in the 1573 Chancery suit against Broughton.110 He was called citizen and barbersurgeon of London in the suit, but it turns out that he had only recently gained the right to so describe himself. The contract with Broughton was dated 2 June 1572; Thomas Gowge app[re]nt[ice] of Edward Bulman was made free of the Company of Barber-Surgeons on 7 October 1572; the lawsuit against Broughton was led on 26 January 1573.111 The timing is certainly curious. Given his leadership position with Lanes Men, Goughe had probably served his apprenticeship well before 1572; so his claiming of his freedom at that time appears to be related to his playing career and/or the lawsuit. There is no denite theatrical record of Goughe after 1573, but on 27 April 1588, as Thomas Goofe, he freed an apprentice named Richard Alderson in the Barber-Surgeons.112 Ellis Guest, Pewterer (1589c. 1638). Actor. Guest was probably the Ellice Gheast, son of Rafe, who was baptized on 6 March 1589 at St. Augustine Watling Street in London.113 In 16056 Guest was apprenticed as a Pewterer to John Catryngham, and he was freed in 161213.114 He had already begun to appear in the Pewterers membership lists in 1611, before he was actually free, and he continued to be named there for the next twenty-six years.115 He is rst mentioned as the leader of a company of traveling players who were granted a license by Sir Henry
109 Farriers Apprentice Bindings (Guildhall Library MS 5526/1), pp. 42 (Yockney), 51 (Wright), 81 (Young). At the same time he bound Wright, Goodwin promised to give him a treble viol or treble cornet at the end of his apprenticeship. Wrights rst apprentice was actually Young, whom Goodwin turned over to him on 4 February 1634; Wrights second apprentice, John Courtney, was turned over by Goodwins widow, Margaret, on 27 October 1635. Biographies of Yockney and Young can be found in Ashbee and Lasocki, 117980 and 118486. 110 Nungezer, 158; and Benbow. 111 Barber-Surgeons Register of Freedom Admissions 15221664 (Guildhall Library MS 5265/1, now on microlm), fol. 14v. 112 Guildhall Library MS 5265/1, fol. 34v. 113 Parish Register, Guildhall Library MS 8872/1. If this was the player, then he cannot have been the son of the Ellis Guest, butcher, whose goods were administered in 1604, as conjectured by Honigmann and Brock, 7. 114 Pewterers Wardens Accounts 15721663 (Guildhall Library MS 7086/3), fol. 275r (Guests binding), fol. 321r (his freedom). The Pewterers lumped together all binding and freedom records for each scal year (Michaelmas to Michaelmas) without recording specic dates. 115 Pewterers Register of the Livery and Yeomanry, 15701677 (Guildhall Library MS 7095/1).
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Herbert in 1625, and over the next decade he led a variety of traveling companies, in one instance teaming with Errington (as noted above).116 The careers of Errington and Guest are oddly parallel. Despite the twelve-year dierence in their ages, both became free of the Pewterers around the same time, both surface more than a decade later as leaders of touring companies, and both vanish from the records (theatrical and livery-company) at the same time. John Heywood, Stationer and Mercer (c. 1497c. 1579). Playwright, leader of boy companies. Though he is most famous as a playwright and epigrammatist, Heywood was also involved with a number of childrens companies that presented plays at court over several decades. He is generally assumed to be the Heywood who was paid for playeng an enterlude wt his Children before Princess Mary in March 1538, and who was rewarded along with Sebastian Westcott of St. Pauls for a childrens performance before Princess Elizabeth on 13 February 1552; and in 1559, after Elizabeths accession, she saw a play of the Chylderyn of Powlles and ther Master Seb[astian], Master Phelypes, and Master Heywood.117 Heywood was also a freeman, being successively free of the Stationers and then the Mercers. He was made free of the city of London in 1523 at the request of Henry VIII, and probably bought his freedom in the Stationers by redemption shortly thereafter when he married the widow of Stationer Richard Pynson Jr., who was the daughter of the printer John Rastell.118 On 30 January 1530, at the urging of his wifes uncle, Sir Thomas More, Heywood was granted the oce of Meter of Linen Cloth and was simultaneously translated from the Stationers to the Mercers with the consent of both companies.119 The early apprentice-binding books of the Mercers do not survive, but in 1542 John Vincente, late apprentice of John Heyewode, was made free of the company.120 Might Vincente have been one of Heywoods Children who played an interlude before Princess Mary in 1538?
See Bentley, Jacobean and Caroline Stage, 2:45354. Ashbee and Lasocki, 56870. 118 Heywoods 1523 freedom is noted by Ashbee and Lasocki, 568; and by John M. Ward in Sadie, ed., 11:477, who mistakenly says that Heywood became free of the Mercers in 1524. The status of Heywoods wife, Joan Rastell Revell Pynson Heywood, is noted in Peter Blayney, The Stationers Company Before the Charter, 14031557 (London: Stationers Company, 2003), 29. 119 Company of Mercers, Acts of Court 1527 to 1560, fol. 27r; Corporation of London, Repertory 8, fol. 83v; and Corporation of London, Letter Book O, fol. 206v. The rst two of these records were brought to my attention by Peter Blayney (personal communication, 2 July 2002), and the last was cited by A. W. Reed in his Early Tudor Drama ([London: Methuen, 1926], 46). 120 List of the Members of the Mercers Company from 1343, p. 512. In this and subsequent citations, page numbers refer to the companys typewritten transcript of the original volume, whose pages are unnumbered.
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William Hunnis, Grocer (d. 1597). Leader of boy company. On 11 November 1560 Hunnis paid 40s and pawned 10 worth of jewelry to be admitted as a freeman of the Grocers by redemption.121 Immediately afterward, he married Agnes Blancke, the widow of John Blagge (who was free of the Grocers) and of Richard Blancke (who was free of the Haberdashers but a grocer by trade), and took over Blanckes house and shop at the south end of London Bridge in St. Olave, Southwark.122 On 11 March 1562 the court of the Grocers Company forced Hunnis to pawn a gold chain and two rings in order to retain a former apprentice of Blanckes, and the following year these items were returned to him. In 1566 Hunnis was elected to the livery of the Grocers Company, and on 15 November of that year he became Master of the Children of the Chapel Royal.123 The children under Hunnis presented plays at court regularly from 1567 until 1584, except from 1575 to 1580, when Richard Farrant was acting master. Hunnis continued to pay his quarterage dues to the Grocers until the late 1580s.124 Anthony Jees, Brewer (15781648). Actor. Jeess rst known stage experience was as a boy-actor with the German branch of the Lord Admirals Men: he went to Wolfenbttel with Robert Browne of the Admirals in 1592, was paid in 1595 as Anthoniussen Jees, and returned to London by 1597.125 Jees appears quite often in Henslowes diary between 1597 and 1602 as a member of the Admirals Men, and he is named in player lists made after the company became Prince Henrys Men in 1603 and throughout the rst decade of the seventeenth century. In the middle of this period, on 14 April 1605, he paid 2s to become free of the Brewers by redemption, and three years later, on 25 October 1608, he paid a further 6s 8d to be admitted to the brethren of the company, which required him to pay quarterage dues. Over the last four months of 1609, Jees bound one apprentice in the Brewers and had four others turned over to him; at the same time, the St. Giles Cripplegate
121 Grocers Orders of the Court of Assistants 15561591 (Guildhall Library MS 11588/1), transcribed in C. C. Stopes, William Hunnis and the Revels of the Chapel Royal (Louvain: A. Uystpruyst, 1910), 12324. 122 Blagges will was proved on 24 May 1552, and Blanckes will was dated 15 May 1560, only six months before his widow married Hunnis (Stopes, 12224). Stopes was unable to nd a record of the marriage of William Hunnis and Agnes Blancke, probably because it took place in St. Olave, Southwark, whose registers begin only in 1583. 123 Grocers Orders of the Court of Assistants 15561591 (Guildhall Library MS 11588/1), fol. v 57 ; Grocers Wardens Accounts 15551578 (Guildhall Library MS 11571/6), fol. 180v. 124 This account of Hunnis is based on Ashbee and Lasocki, 61012; and on Stopes, 12131. 125 Willem Schrickx,English Actors at the Courts of Wolfenbttel, Brussels and Graz during the Lifetime of Shakespeare, Shakespeare Survey 33 (1980): 15368, esp. 157; Willem Schrickx,English Actors Names in German Archives and Elizabethan Theatre History, Deutsche ShakespeareGesellschaft West Jahrbuch (1982): 14661, esp. 151.
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parish register starts calling him brewer rather than player, suggesting that he had become a brewer by profession as well as a Brewer.126 He was quite active in company aairs for the next twenty-plus years, taking fteen apprentices between 1610 and 1621 and being elected a warden of the company in 1622. (Since Jees had given up acting, his apprentices were presumably all trained as brewers.) In the early 1630s he began to experience nancial diculties, and from 1633 until his death in 1648 he was on the companys poor rolls, receiving a regular pension.127 Ben Jonson, Bricklayer (c. 15721637). Actor, playwright. Jonsons stepfather Robert Brett was a bricklayer by profession, free of the Company of Tylers and Bricklayers; in fact, Brett was master of the company when he died in 1609.128 Jonson was a freeman of the Tylers and Bricklayers himself by 29 June 1596, when he paid his quarterage dues for a period extending back at least to Michaelmas 1595 and probably to Michaelmas 1594.129 Mary Edmond thought that Jonson had become a freeman by patrimony through Brett, but freedom by patrimony was available only to biological sons, not stepsons. Mark Eccles argued plausibly that Jonson could have been apprenticed to Brett in 1587 at the age of fteen, served an apprenticeship for the standard seven years, and been freed around Michaelmas 1594, just before he married Anne Lewis on 14 November of that year.130 Jonson kept paying his quarterage dues at irregular intervals up to the end of 1602, during the period when he was rapidly rising to fame. Even though his status as a Bricklayer provided satiric fodder for his detractors, Jonson evidently thought it worthwhile to remain a member of the company in good standing.131
See Brewers Wardens Account 15821616 (Guildhall Library MS 5442/5) and Court Minutes 16041612 (Guildhall Library MS 5445/12), both unpaginated; and Nungezer, 203. 127 See S. P. Cerasano, Anthony Jees, Player and Brewer, Notes & Queries 229 (1984): 22125; and Eccles, Actors II, 460. Cerasano provides much valuable information about Jeess career as a brewer, but she missed his initial freedom in 1605, mistakenly taking his 1608 admission into the brethren as a freedom admission. 128 Thomas Fuller and John Aubrey had mentioned in the seventeenth century that Jonsons stepfather was a bricklayer, but this man was rst identied as Robert Brett by Mark Eccles in his essay Jonsons Marriage, Review of English Studies 12 (1936): 25772. 129 Tylers and Bricklayers Quarterage Book (Guildhall Library MS 3051/1), cited by Mary Edmond,Pembrokes Men, Review of English Studies 25 (1974): 12936, esp. 135. 130 Mark Eccles,Ben Jonson, Citizen and Bricklayer, Notes & Queries 233 (1988): 44546. 131 In Thomas Dekkers Satiromastix (1601) the character representing Jonson is called a whooreson poore lyme and hayre-rascall (1.2.281) and a Morter-treader (4.2.47), and is mocked for his reliance on Ouids Mortar-Morphesis (5.2.188); see The Dramatic Works of Thomas Dekker, ed. Fredson Bowers, 4 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 195361), 1:324, 355, 379. The anonymous author of 2 The Return from Parnassus (160102) calls Jonson the wittiest fellow of a bricklayer in England (1.2.293); see Three Parnassus Plays (15981601), ed. J. B. Leishman (London: Nicholson and Watson, 1949).
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After 1602 Jonson let his membership lapse, but on 1 May 1611 he paid 11s 4d in quarterage dues, covering the previous eight years.132 Around the same time, the Bricklayers paid 10s 8d for wyne and suger for Beniamin Iohnson.133 The purpose of this substantial outlay is not certain; perhaps the company was welcoming Jonson back into their active ranks by celebrating in a tavern. One year later, on 1 May 1612, Jonson bound John Catlin, son of John Catlin, deceased Bricklayer, of Birmingham, Warwickshire, as his apprentice for a term of eight years.134 The exact purpose of the binding is unclear. Jonson went to France as the tutor of Wat Raleigh in 161213; did he bring Catlin along for some reason? Or did he perhaps rent Catlin out to a professional playing company? In Christmas His Masque, written a few years later, Jonson has Venus brag about her son, the play boy Cupid: I could ha had money enough for him an I would ha been tempted, and ha let him out by the week to the kings players; Master Burbage has been about and about with me; and so has old Master Hemminges too, they ha need of him.135 Thomas Kendall, Haberdasher (1561?1608). Leader of boy company. In 1587 Kendall was made free of the Haberdashers by servitude; unfortunately, two Thomas Kendalls were freed that year within ve weeks of each other (one on 28 July through apprenticeship with John Newdick, the other on 1 September through apprenticeship with Robert Sadler), and it is impossible to tell which of the two is the theatrical manager.136 The Blackfriars Kendall married Anne Tipsley on 21 January 1590 at St. Mary Le Strand and later apprenticed his wifes relative (possibly brother) Francis Tipsley, who was freed on 9 March 1603. When a Haberdasher became Lord Mayor in 1604, Kendall and Tipsley were paid by the Haberdashers for furnishing the children wth apparrell and other thinges needfull for the shewe, that is, the traditional Lord Mayors pageant.137 By this time Kendall was also involved in the management of the Children of the Chapel at the Blackfriars; he had signed articles of agreement for the company in
Guildhall Library MS 3051/1. Guildhall Library MS 3054/1. 134 Guildhall Library MS 3045/1, fol. 17r. The page with Jonsons binding of Catlin is actually the rst one in the volume as it now stands, despite being labeled fol. 17. The record states that payment was made on 29 June but notes that the apprenticeship started on the feast of the apostles Philip and James (1 May). 135 Ben Jonson, Christmas His Masque in Court Masques: Jacobean and Caroline Entertainments, 16051640, ed. David Lindley (Oxford and New York: Oxford UP, 1995), 10916, esp. 112. 136 Haberdashers Register of Freedom Admissions 15261642 (Guildhall Library MS 15857/1), fol. 128r. 137 Smith,Personnel, 443, which is the source of all information in this paragraph unless otherwise noted. Interesting information about Kendall also appears in Mark Eccles,Martin Peerson and the Blackfriars, Shakespeare Survey 11 (1958): 100106.
133
132
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1602 after Henry Evans was forced out, and was one of its patentees in 1604 when it was called the Children of the Queens Revels. Of most interest for my purposes is a lawsuit led by Kendall in 1607 against Alice Cooke, whose son Abel had been apprenticed to Kendall in November 1606.138 According to the contract, reproduced in the lawsuit, Cooke was bound to Kendall for a term of three years (the same term specied in Martin Slaters agreement with the Children of the Kings Revels), during which the said Abell shall practice and exercise himself in the quality of playing, as one of the Queens majestys children of her Revels aforesaid.139 But Cooke left Kendall in May 1607 after only six months, leading to the lawsuit. Cookes apprenticeship with Kendall does not appear in the Haberdashers Register of Apprentice Bindings (Guildhall Library MS 15860/3), but, as with Slater, it seems very unlikely that Kendalls status as a freeman is completely irrelevant. Kendall died in 1608, amid a urry of lawsuits resulting from the demise of the Blackfriars Boys.140 Robert Keysar, Goldsmith (1576c. 1640). Investor in boy companies. Keysar was apprenticed at Michaelmas 1591 to Robert Williamson, a Goldsmith of somewhat dubious reputation, but served the last ve years of his apprenticeship with his brother, John Keysar, before becoming free of the Goldsmiths in October 1598. Around 1606 Keysar appears to have given up goldsmithing in favor of various ventures, including an investment in the Blackfriars playhouse; for a while in 1608 he was even nominally in charge of the company before it collapsed in the same year. Keysar then entered into a short-lived venture with Philip Rosseter for a boy company at Whitefriars, after which he withdrew from theatrical activities for good.141 John Lowin, Goldsmith (15761653). Actor. At Christmas 1593 Lowin was apprenticed as a Goldsmith for eight years to Nicholas Rudyard.142 In 16023, he appears in Henslowes diary as a member of Worcesters Men, and by the end of 1603, he was a member of the Kings Men. No record of his freedom appears in the Goldsmiths court books, but he probably became free of the company in 16012 and was certainly free by 1611. When Goldsmith James Pemberton was being installed
138 If the player was the Abel Cooke who was baptized at Allhallows London Wall on 4 April 1589
(according to the International Genealogial Index), then he was seventeen years old when he was apprenticed to Kendall. 139 PRO Kings Bench 27/1357, membrane 582, transcribed in Wickham, Berry, and Ingram, eds., 269. 140 Kendalls will is reproduced in abstract by Honigmann and Brock, 7980; and the Blackfriars lawsuits are summarized in Wickham, Berry, and Ingram, eds., 51422. 141 See William Ingram, Robert Keysar, Playhouse Speculator, Shakespeare Quarterly 37 (1986): 47685. 142 Goldsmiths Apprentice Book 1, fol. 98r.
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as Lord Mayor that year, Lowin was employed by the company to play the part of Lepston in the Lord Mayors show written by Anthony Munday, Chruso-Thriambos, the Triumphs of Golde, and to provide his own horse for the show. In the Goldsmiths Court Minute Book for 3 September 1611 he is described as Iohn Lowen one of his Ma:ties players and brother of this Companie, a phrase used only of freemen. On 24 January 1612 Lowin bound his rst apprentice, Michael Bedell, son of Leonard Bedell, yeoman, of Middlesex, for a term of ten years. Bedell was probably the Mighell who played a huntsman and a captain for the Kings Men in Sir John Van Olden Barnavelt in August 1619; Michael was not a very common name, and Bedell would have been in his early twenties at the time, nearing the end of his apprenticeship.143 Lowin subsequently bound Thomas Jerey, son of Edmund Jerey, citizen and Merchant Taylor, of London (on 15 April 1614 for a term of seven years), and George Varnum, son of William Varnum, gentleman, of Langham, Cheshire (on 9 May 1617 for a term of seven years).144 Between 1624 and 1630 George Vernon (undoubtedly the same person as Varnum, whose term expired in 1624) was a player with the Kings Men and had three children christened at St. Saviours Southwark.145 Jerey cannot be denitely traced with the Kings Men, but I consider him a hitherto-unknown boy-player. Lowin bound no more apprentices as Goldsmiths, but he served as one of several business managers for the Kings Men after John Hemingess death in 1630 and remained associated with the company until his own death in 1653.146 George Maller, Merchant Taylor? Glazier? (c. 1490c. 1540). Actor. Maller was a member of Henry VIIIs court interluders from the mid-1520s to about 1540, during which time he was involved in two lawsuits of theatrical interest. In 1529 Maller became embroiled in a series of lawsuits against Thomas Arthur, who had apprenticed himself to Maller for one year,him to teach in playing of interludes and plays, whereby he might attain and come to be one of the Kings players.147 Maller is described in the bill of complaint as a glazier, suggesting that he was free of the
143 Goldsmiths Apprentice Book 1, fol. 201r; Nungezer, 251. The 1612 entry describes Lowin as John Lowen cittizen and gold smith of london, removing any doubt as to whether he was free of the Goldsmiths. 144 Goldsmiths Apprentice Book 1, fols. 214r and 230v. 145 Bentley, Jacobean and Caroline Stage, 2:61112. 146 The most complete account of Lowins career is Rick Bowers,John Lowin: Actor-Manager of the Kings Company, 16031642, Theatre Survey 28 (1987): 1535. However, Bowers missed the records of Lowins apprentices in the Goldsmiths apprentice book. 147 For more information on Mallers playing career, see Nungezer, 250; and Ian Lancashire, Dramatic Texts and Records of Britain: A Chronological Topography to 1558 (Toronto and Bualo: U of Toronto P, 1984), 389.The bill of complaint, the only surviving document from the 1529 suit, is transcribed in Wickham, Berry, and Ingram, eds., 27577.
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Company of Glaziers and formally apprenticed Arthur in that company. However, the Glaziers apprentice-binding books survive only from 1694 onward. Around 1530 Maller deposed in another lawsuit involving the printer-playwright-adventurer John Rastell, in which Rastell claimed that Henry Walton had inappropriately lent out theatrical costumes belonging to Rastell while the latter was overseas. Here Maller describes himself as George Mayler of London, merchant tailor, of the age of forty years.148 The companys freedom admissions do not survive for the relevant years, but since only freemen of the Merchant Taylors were allowed to describe themselves in this way, the most likely scenario is that Maller was free of the Merchant Taylors but had at some time practiced the trade of a glazier.149 Anthony Munday, Draper (15601633). Playwright. Munday, the son of Christopher Munday, a freeman of the Drapers who was a stationer by trade, was orphaned at an early age. On 1 October 1576, at the age of sixteen, Anthony was apprenticed as a stationer to John Allde, but soon afterward he left Allde to begin his long career as a prolic writer of ballads, translations, and plays.150 On 12 January 1581, some ten months short of reaching majority, Munday convinced the Court of Orphans that he was twenty-one years old in order to receive his portion, even though he had actually been baptized on 13 October 1560. On 21 June 1585 he claimed his freedom in the Drapers by patrimony, being described as a Poet by Criplegate, and he paid quarterage dues to the Drapers from at least 1605 (the rst year for which quarterage records survive) to 1626.151 Between 1602 and 1623 he contributed to at least fteen Lord Mayors pageants, calling himself citizen and draper on the title pages of the printed texts. Mundays son Richard worked on several of these pageants as a painter-stainer, and on 13 January 1613 Richard Munday also claimed his freedom in the Drapers by patrimony.152 In 1611 Munday received
Numerous documents from this suit are transcribed in Wickham, Berry, and Ingram, eds., 22932. 149 Thanks to Peter Blayney for this suggestion. The Merchant Taylors list of freedom admissions goes back only to 1530, and the wardens accounts (which also contain freedom admissions) between 1484 and 1545 are missing. 150 Edward Arber, ed., Transcript of the Register of the Company of Stationers, 15541640 A. D., 5 vols. (New York: P. Smith, 1950), 2:69. 151 Mark Eccles,Anthony Munday in Studies in the English Renaissance Drama, Josephine Bennett, Oscar Cargill, and Vernon Hall Jr., eds. (New York: New York UP, 1959), 95105; Drapers Freedom List 15671656 (MS +278/F.A. 1), p. 53, transcribed by Robertson and Gordon, 165; Drapers Quarterage Book 16051618 (MS +261/Q.B. 1) and 161728 (MS +259/Q.B. 2). 152 David Bergeron, Anthony Munday: Pageant Poet to the City of London, Huntington Library Quarterly 30 (1967): 34568; Drapers Freedom List 15671656 (MS +278/F.A. 1), p. 141, transcribed by Robertson and Gordon, eds., 177.
148
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rewards from the Goldsmiths and the Merchant Taylors for presentation copies of his Brief Chronicle; in 1618 he received rewards from the Skinners, Goldsmiths, and Merchant Taylors for his continuation of Stows Survey of London; and in 1634, after his death, his widow received rewards from the Barber-Surgeons, Goldsmiths, Merchant Taylors, Vintners, Skinners, Ironmongers, and Drapers for his new edition of Stows Survey.153 John Newton, Haberdasher (c. 15871625). Actor. On 23 July 1604, John Newton, son of John Newton of St. Leonard Shoreditch, was apprenticed as a Haberdasher for a term of seven years to Edmund Kendall, brother of the Thomas Kendall who helped to manage the Blackfriars Boys.154 This apprenticeship may mean that Newton had some connection with the Blackfriars; in any case, he was freed as a Haberdasher in 1611.155 He had already been listed in a 1610 patent as a member of the Duke of Yorks Men (later to become Prince Charless Men), and he was identied in a series of 1611 depositions as a sharer in the dukes company at the Boars Head.156 He was to remain one of that companys lead comedians until his death in 1625.157 On 24 June 1614 John Newton, Haberdasher, of St. Bartholomew the Less, was bound over to keep the peace toward Richard Middleton.158 We can be fairly condent that this record refers to the player because his sureties were two players, Robert Hamlen and Henry Clay, and in the previous year Newton had given surety for the actors Martin Slater and Robert Dawes. Hamlen and Dawes had been members of the Duke of Yorks Men in 1610 alongside Newton.159 Arthur Savill, Goldsmith (1617after 1639). Actor. Savill was baptized in St. James Clerkenwell on 27 February 1617, the son of Cordaile Savill, gentleman. As noted above, Savill was apprenticed to Andrew Cane as a Goldsmith on 5 August 1631 and played the gentlewoman Quartilla (alongside Cane as Trimalchio) for Prince Charless Men at Salisbury Court in December 1631.160 The month before this performance, Elizabeth Holland, the widow of Aaron Holland, builder of the Red Bull playhouse, left 40s in her will to Arthur Savill Apprentice vnto mr Caine Goldsmith London.161 Eight years later, on 19 July 1639, Arthur Savill became free
Robertson and Gordon, eds., 17682. Haberdashers Register of Apprentice Bindings, Guildhall Library MS 15860/3. 155 Haberdashers Register of Freedom Admissions 15261642, Guildhall Library MS 15857/1, fol. 165r. 156 See Loreen L. Giese, Theatrical Citings and Bitings: Some References to Playhouses and Players in London Consistory Court Depositions, 15861611, Early Theatre 1 (1998): 11325. 157 Bentley, Jacobean and Caroline Stage, 2:51516. 158 Mark Eccles,Elizabethan Actors III: KR, Notes & Queries 237 (1992): 293303, esp. 299. 159 Eccles,Actors III, 299. 160 Goldsmiths Apprentice Book 1, fol. 305r. 161 Ingram,Arthur Savill, Stage Player, 2122.
154
153
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of the Goldsmiths.162 No specic roles beyond Quartilla are known for him, but the testimony of his fellow apprentice Wright indicates that Canes apprentices were kept busy on stage. John Shank, Weaver (d. 1636). Actor. Shank can be identied as a freeman of the Weavers, since he described himself in his will as Iohn Shancke one of his M[ajestys] servants the players and Citizen and Weaver of London.163 He does not appear in the oldest surviving Weavers freedom register, which covers the period 1600 to 1646; so presumably he gained his freedom before 1600.164 Shank wrote in the 1635 Sharers Papers that he had rst served Henry Herbert, earl of Pembroke, and then Queen Elizabeth, but the rst independent record of him as a player is with the Princes-Palsgraves Men in 1610 and 1613. A John Shancke, weaver, of Kent Street in Surrey gave bail in 1612/13, and if this was the players father, his freedom may have been by patrimony.165 Shank had joined the Kings Men by 1619, the time at which some of the events described in the Sharers Papers took place. Shank wrote that he had, of his own purse, supplied the company for the service of his majesty with boys, as Thomas Pollard, John Thompson, deceased (for whom he paid 40), your suppliant having paid his part of 200 for other boys since his coming to the companyJohn Honyman, Thomas Holcombe and divers othersand at this time maintains three more for the said service.166 Holcombe, as we saw above, was apprenticed to John Heminges as a Grocer in 1618, and Shank seems to imply that Pollard and Thompson had been apprenticed to him; unfortunately, no records of apprentice bindings for the Weavers survive from this period.167 Martin Slater, Ironmonger (c. 15601625). Actor, leader of boy company. On 17 January 1581 Slater bound himself as an apprentice to Richard Smith, Ironmonger.168 While the Ironmongers register of freedom admissions for the 1580s has been damaged, leaving us without an exact date for Slaters freedom, there is a July 1594 entry in the Ironmongers cash book in which marten slaetter a plaer is listed as owing back quarterage dues for the past six and three-quarters years.169
Ingram,Arthur Savill, Stage Player, 2122. Honigmann and Brock, 18690. 164 Guildhall Library MS 4656/1. 165 Mark Eccles,Elizabethan Actors IV: S to End, Notes & Queries 238 (1993): 16768. 166 Wickham, Berry, and Ingram, eds., 225. 167 The Weavers court minutes for 161019 do survive (in Guildhall Library MS 4655/1), and Shank does not appear there; but this merely means that he did not get into trouble with the company. Neither Pollard nor Thompson appears in the 16001646 Weavers freedom register, cited above. 168 Ironmongers Presentment Book (formerly Guildhall Library MS 16981/1, now in the custody of the Ironmongers but available on microlm at the Guildhall Library); Slaters oath in this book is autograph.
163
162
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We can thus deduce that he must have been freed in late 1587. Over the next thirty years Slater continued to appear in the cash book as a freeman of the Ironmongers while simultaneously pursuing a wide range of theatrical activities, including acting with various companies and investing in the Red Bull playhouse in 1605.170 In 1607 Slater apparently decided to become more active in the Ironmongers livery company; he paid nearly twenty years worth of back quarterage dues in one lump sum and was listed among such parsones wch for the most parte macke good apperannce.171 The following year the struggling Children of the Kings Revels at the Whitefriars recruited him to be their manager. The companys agreement with him, preserved in subsequent lawsuits, called Slater citizen and ironmonger and specied that the children of the company would be bound to him for a period of three years. None of these children are mentioned in the Ironmongers apprenticebinding book; in fact, Slater does not appear to have bound any apprentices as Ironmongers in nearly forty years with the company.172 Nevertheless, Slaters status as a freeman seems to have been relevant to his agreement with the Children of the Kings Revels, and it is suggestive that he squared his accounts with the Ironmongers just before the agreement was made. Richard Tarlton, Haberdasher and Vintner (d. 1588). Actor. At some point before 1569, Tarlton was apprenticed as a Haberdasher to Raphe Boswell, and he was eventually freed on 26 September 1576.173 On 11 February 1577, while a member of Sussexs Men, Tarlton married Thomasine Dann in Chelmsford, Essex.174 The wedding took place near the home of Lady Frances Mildmay, the earl of Sussexs sister, to whom Tarlton dedicated Tarletons Tragicall Treatises the following year.175 Tarltons Jests claims that Tarlton kept an ordinary in Paternoster Row and a tavern, called the Saba, in Gracechurch Street, which implies that he was free of the Company of Vintners. In fact, he was: on 27 May 1584 Tarleton was translated from
Guildhall Library MS 16977/1, available on microlm at the Guildhall Library; Ironmongers Cash Book 15931628 (Guildhall Library MS 16987/2), p. 20. 170 For descriptions of these activities, see Nungezer, 32931; and Eccles,Actors IV, 16972. 171 Ironmongers Cash Book 15931628 (Guildhall Library MS 16987/2), p. 224. 172 The 1608 agreement is reproduced in Wickham, Berry, and Ingram, eds., 26971. I searched the Ironmongers Presentment Book from 1587 to 1624 but found no apprentices bound to Slater. However, this book does not appear to include all apprentices bound in the company. 173 Haberdashers Register of Freedom Admissions 15261642 (Guildhall Library MS 15857/1), fol. 114v. 174 Parish Register of Chelmsford St. Mary, St. Peter, and St. Cedd, Essex Record Oce MS D/P 94/1/2. 175 See L. B. Campbell,Richard Tarlton and the Earthquake of 1580, Huntington Library Quarterly 4 (1941): 293301; and Eccles, Actors IV, 173. Tarltons publications are described by Nungezer, who also gives an exhaustive list of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century allusions to Tarlton (34765).
169
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the Haberdashers to the Vintners at his own request, and on 4 October 1584 Richard Tharleton paid 20d to become free of the Vintners by redemption.176 Ten days later, on 14 October, he bound an apprentice, Richard Haywarde.177 While Tarlton may have bound Haywarde to help in his taverns, it is more likely that Haywarde was bound to act with the Queens Men and is the earliest boy-player whose name we know. On 23 December 1585 Thamsyn the wief of Richard Tarlton vintener was buried at St. Martin Ludgate, and Tarlton himself was buried at St. Leonard Shoreditch on 3 September 1588.178 Henry Totnell, Barber-Surgeon (c. 15381593). Actor. Totnell was freed as a Barber-Surgeon on 20 January 1562 after serving an apprenticeship with Robert Sprignell, and on 25 April of that year he married Elizabeth Richardson at St. Mary Le Bow in London. Over the next two decades he freed two apprentices in the company: Henry Boyst on 15 January 1572, and Nicholas Mannering on 12 February 1578.179 On 29 April 1583 he married his second wife,Jellyand (Gillian) Daggett, at St. Saviours Southwark, and he subsequently had two children christened there: Richard Totnell sonne of Harrye a barbore on 5 September 1585 and Jone Tottnell d of Harrye a player on 20 March 1591.180 This latter entry in the parish register is the only record of Totnell as a player, and it is curious to see it coming so late in life, when he must have been in his fties. Perhaps he was a hired man at the Rose; it is tempting, however, to see a connection between Totnells apprentice Nicholas Mannering and Nicholas Mannery, the father of the Samuel Mannery who was apprenticed to Thomas Goodwin in 1629. In any case, Totnell and his daughter Joan were both buried at St. Saviours in 1593, on 28 January and 1 October respectively. James Tunstall/Dunstone, Saddler (c. 15551599). Actor. Known both as James Tunstall and James Dunstone, this man was probably the son of Henry Tunstall, a freeman of the Saddlers, who lived in St. Botolph Aldgate and died in 1591. If so, he most likely gained his freedom by patrimony. He rst appears as a player with Worcesters Men in 1583, alongside Edward Alleyn, and he appears frequently in Philip Henslowes records in the 1590s as a member of the Admirals Men. In the
176 Haberdashers Court Minute Book (Guildhall Library MS 15842/1); Vintners Freeman Book
1 (Guildhall Library MS 15211/1), fol. 171r. I am grateful to William Ingram for bringing the record of Tarltons translation to my attention. 177 Vintners Freeman Book 1 (Guildhall Library MS 15211/1), fol. 171v. 178 Guildhall Library MS 10212 (Thomasine Tarltons burial, also cited in Eccles, Actors IV, 172); Guildhall Library MS 7499/1 (Richard Tarltons burial, cited in Nungezer, 351, and elsewhere). 179 Barber-Surgeons Register of Freedom Admissions (Guildhall Library MS 5265/1, fols. 18v, r 24 , 28r [on microlm]); and St. Mary Le Bow Parish Register (Guildhall Library MS 4996). 180 St. Saviours Southwark Parish Register (London Metropolitan Archive microlm X097/270).
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transcription of his nuncupative will, dated 8 December 1599, he is identied as a citizen and saddler of London, and in the record of his burial two days later he is Jeames Tunstall Cittizen & sadler of London & a player.181 Nicholas Underhill, Draper (c. 1608c. 1634). Playhouse musician and actor. Underhill was the son of John Underhill, musician, of Chichester, Sussex, and may have been related to Thomas Underhill. The latter lived in St. Saviours Southwark and was a royal trumpeter from 1603 to 1624.182 Nicholas Underhill was apprenticed to Ambrose Beeland on 13 October 1620 for a term of twelve years. Alongside Beeland, he served as a violinist and minor actor for the Kings Men at the Blackfriars until gaining his freedom as a Draper on 22 February 1632.183 Underhill was certainly with the Kings Men in 1624, and for them he played Shackle in The Soddered Citizen (c. 1630) and probably a Carthaginian ocer (as Nick) in Believe As You List (1631).184 Underhill bound his only apprentice, Jeremy Short, on 22 May 1633, and by the following year he had moved to the Cockpit, where he was working when he played the violin in James Shirleys masque The Triumph of Peace (1634).185 His only son, the famous Restoration actor Cave Underhill, was baptized at St. Andrew Holborn on 17 March 1634.186 After this date, Nicholas Underhill disappears from the documentary record. He paid quarterage dues to the Drapers only in 163334, and his apprentice Jeremy Short was eventually freed in 1652 by Underhills former master, Beeland.187
Ingram, Business of Playing, 2529. Ingram speculates about the signicance of Tunstalls status as a freeman, raising many interesting questions that the present paper, I hope, goes some small way toward answering. 182 For Thomas Underhill, see Ashbee and Lasocki, 1110; and Bentley, Jacobean and Caroline Stage, 2:60910. 183 Drapers Apprentice Bindings 16151634 (MS +288/F.B. 2) (Underhills binding); Freedom List 15671656 (MS +278/F.A. 1), p. 201 (Underhills freedom). 184 Bentley, Jacobean and Caroline Stage, 2:609. It is improbable that Underhill is the Nick who played Barnavelts wife in Sir John Van Olden Barnavelt in August 1619, which was staged by the Kings Men more than a year before the start of his apprenticeship; the likelier candidate for this role is John Hemingess apprentice Nicholas Crosse. 185 Drapers Apprentice Bindings 16151634 (MS +288/F.B. 2); and Sabol, 25. 186 Philip H. Highll Jr., Kalman A. Burnim, and Edward A. Langhans, compilers of A Biographical Dictionary of Actors, Actresses, Musicians, Dancers, Managers & Other Stage Personnel in London, 16601800 (16 vols. [Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois UP, 197393]), note that the register of the Merchant Taylors School says that Cave Underhill was the son of Nicholas Underhill, clothworker, and wonder whether this Nicholas was related to the musician/actor with the Kings Men (15:80). In fact, they were the same person; no Nicholas Underhill appears in the records of the Clothworkers Company, and it is apparent that a clerk merely confused the similar terms draper and clothworker. (I am grateful to the Clothworkers former archivist David Wickham for answering my queries.) 187 Drapers Quarterage Book 16281642 (MS +260/Q.B. 3) and Freedom List 15671656 (MS +278/F.A. 1).
181
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Francis Walpole, Merchant Taylor (c. 15851625). Actor. On 23 April 1599 Francis Walpole, son of Henry Walpole of Brize Norton, Oxfordshire, was apprenticed for eight years to Thomas Godfrey, Merchant Taylor.188 Godfrey died of the plague in September 1604, after which the Merchant Taylors Court of Assistants assigned Walpole to serve the rest of his apprenticeship with Thomas Bicknell, Haberdasher, who subsequently freed Walpole as a Merchant Taylor on 30 June 1606.189 Since Walpole later testied that he met the actor Ellis Worth around this time, he may already have been involved with the stage; or the meeting may simply have come about because Worths father was a Merchant Taylor. By 1616, according to his own later testimony, Walpole was a sharer in Queen Annes Men at the Red Bull. On 23 January of that year, he bound two apprentices: William Allam, son of Thomas Allam, yeoman, of Kimpston, Bedfordshire, for eight years; and Edward Catesby, son of John Catesby, deceased gentleman, of Hackney, for ten years. Catesby was never freed, but Walpole freed Allam as a Merchant Taylor on 15 March 1624.190 It is tempting to identify this apprentice with the William Allen who played leading roles for Queen Henriettas Men starting in the mid-1620s, though the name is so common that the identication cannot be certain. Walpole testied that he left Queen Annes around 1618, and his later acting career, if any, is undocumented. He did, however, bind another apprentice on 11 March 1622: Henry Savadge, son of James Savadge, citizen and joiner of London, for nine years. When he testied on 17 September 1623 in the Chancery suit Worth v. Baskerville, Walpole described himself as of St. Mary Aldermary, Citizen and Merchant Taylor of London, age thirty-eight. He lived only two more years, being buried in St. Mary Aldermary on 26 December 1625.191 John Webster, Merchant Taylor (c. 1580after 1625). Playwright. Webster was the son of John Webster, a wealthy freeman of the Merchant Taylors who was a coachmaker by profession.192 The playwrights younger brother Edward was
188 Merchant Taylors Apprentice Binding Book 15981601 (Guildhall Library MS 34038/3), part A, fol. 28v. 189 Merchant Taylors Ordinary Court Minutes 15951607 (Guildhall Library MS 34017/1), fols. 192v and 248v. 190 Merchant Taylors Apprentice Binding Book 16131616 (Guildhall Library MS 34038/7), p. 242; Merchant Taylors Ordinary Court Minutes 16191630 (Guildhall Library MS 34017/3), p. 295. 191 C. J. Sisson,Notes on Early Stuart Stage History, Modern Language Review 37 (1942): 2536, esp. 29; Sisson, The Red Bull Company, 68n; Merchant Taylors Apprentice Binding Book 16171622 (Guildhall Library MS 34038/8), p. 150; St. Mary Aldermary parish register (Guildhall Library MS 8990/1). 192 The identity of Websters father was rst established by Mary Edmond in her essay In Search of John Webster, Times Literary Supplement (24 December 1976): 162162; further information has
42
apprenticed to their father and made free of the Merchant Taylors on 3 February 1612, following the family trade as a practicing coachmaker. The younger John Webster claimed his freedom in the Merchant Taylors by patrimony on 19 June 1615, and the 1624 title page of Monuments of Honor, written for the Lord Mayors pageant for the Merchant Taylors in 1624, identies the plays author as Iohn Webster Merchant-Taylor.193 In the dedication to the Lord Mayor, Webster calls himself one born free of your company, meaning that he was free by patrimony. Thomas Woodford, Grocer (1578after 1628). Producer/investor in boy companies. Woodford was the son of Gamaliel Woodford, a wealthy member of the Grocers who fell into nancial and legal diculties in 1597; Thomas took up his freedom in the Grocers by patrimony on 20 June 1598.194 For the next several years he engaged in various business ventures to repair the familys fortunes, including serving as a middleman to produce a play for the Children of Pauls in 1602. The family fortunes eventually improved, but Woodford continued to dabble in theatrical investments. He was an investor in the Children of the Kings Revels at Whitefriars in 16078 and in the Red Bull in 1612.195 Ellis Worth, Merchant Taylor (c. 15871659). Actor. Worth was a member of the Queen Annes Revels company from 1612 to at least 1623, and in the 1630s he and Andrew Cane were the leaders of the reconstituted Prince Charless Men. On 30 January 1639, when he is last mentioned as a player, Worth claimed his freedom in the Merchant Taylors by patrimony as the son of Henry Worth, deceased. In 1646 he certied the service of John Wright, apprentice of his former fellow Andrew Cane, when Wright claimed his freedom in the Goldsmiths; and in 1655 he testied alongside Wright in the Chancery suit de Caine v. Wintershall, describing himself as Ellis Worth of White Crosse streete in the parishe of St. Gyles Cripplegate in the County of Middlesex gent aged 67 yeares or thereabouts.196 John Wright, Goldsmith (c. 1615c. 1656). Actor. Wright was the son of John Wright, baker, of St. Giles Cripplegate. As noted above, Wright was apprenticed to Andrew Cane as a Goldsmith on 27 November 1629 for a term of eight years and apparently played Milliscent in Hollands Leaguer for Prince Charless Men in
been provided by Mark Eccles (TLS [21 January 1977]: 71) and Edmond (TLS [11 March 1977]: 272). 193 R. G. Howarth,Two Notes on John Webster, Modern Language Review 63 (1968): 78589. 194 Grocers Wardens Accounts 15921601 (Guildhall Library MS 11571/8), fol. 573v. 195 Ingram, The Playhouse as an Investment, 20930. Herbert Berry summarizes Woodfords lawsuits against Aaron Holland regarding the Red Bull; see The Red Bull in Wickham, Berry, and Ingram, eds., 59294. 196 Merchant Taylors Ordinary Court Minutes 16381651 (Guildhall Library MS 34018/3, unpaginated); PRO C24/785/53.
43
December 1631. No further roles are known for him, but in his 1655 deposition Wright gave his age as 40 yeares or thereabouts, meaning that he was about fteen when apprenticed. He turns up with Beestons Boys at the Cockpit in 1639 and nally became free of the Goldsmiths on 13 March 1646, with his stage colleague Ellis Worth, Merchant Taylor, certifying his service instead of Cane. In the 1650s Wright wrote ballads and seems to have been involved with the quasi-theatrical performances at the Red Bull until his death around 1656.197 John Young, Mercer (. 153470). Actor. Young was freed as a Mercer in 1534 after serving an apprenticeship with Robert Ferrer.198 Within the next few years he was one of Queen Jane Seymours players, along with John Slye, David Sotherne, and John Mouneld. In 1538 John Young, Mercer, led a suit in Chancery against a man from whom Young and his fellow actors had rented a horse that proved unt to carry their playing garments in a tour of northern England, in exercising theire usuall feates of playinge in interludes.199 In 1539 Young replaced John Roo as one of the kings interluders, and he was still drawing an annuity in 156970.
CODA: JOHN RHODES, CITIZEN AND DRAPER
To conclude this survey of theatrical freemen and their apprentices, there is no more tting gure than John Rhodes (1600c. 1669), best known for his role in organizing some of the rst Restoration theatrical companies. Rhodes was heavily involved in theatrical aairs from the 1620s until his death in the late 1660s. He was also a freeman of the Drapers; as such, he apprenticed some of the last boys to play female roles on the English stageallowing us to witness the end of the apprenticeship system that had held sway for more than a century.200 Rhodes was baptized on 27 January 1600 in St. Bride Fleet Street, London, the son of John Rhodes, minister.201 He was apprenticed as a Draper to Thomas Earle
197 Goldsmiths Apprentice Book 1, fol. 294v (Wrights binding); PRO C24/785/53; Bentley, Jacobean and Caroline Stage, 2:62728. 198 List of the Members of the Mercers Company from 1343, p. 567. 199 The suit (PRO C.1.931/39) is described by C. C. Stopes in her Shakespeares Environment, 2d ed. (London: G. Bell, 1918), 23537; by Nungezer, 403; and by Lancashire, 6566. 200 The following account of Rhodess career can be supplemented with recent articles by Paula Backscheider (Behind City Walls: Restoration Actors in the Drapers Company, forthcoming in Theatre Survey) and John Astington (John Rhodes: Draper, Bookseller, and Man of the Theatre, Theatre Notebook 57 [2003]: 8287), each of whom refers to documents not cited here. 201 Guildhall Library MS 6536. On 28 June 1641 Rhodes gave his age as forty-two (Beale v. Dulwich College, PRO C24/663/11); and on 29 November 1649 he gave it as 50 yeares or thereabouts (Lisle v. Dulwich College, PRO C24/728/90), in both cases rounding up by a year. Late in life he began to shave a few years o his age, misleading some modern investigators. For example, on
44
on 22 May 1611 for a term of thirteen years and was freed by Earle on 16 March 1625.202 His brother Matthew was apprenticed as a Stationer to George Elde on 12 October 1612 (by which time their father was dead) and was freed on 3 November 1619.203 From the beginning, perhaps through his brothers connections, Rhodes made his primary living as a bookseller. In 1628 he was listed among secondhand booksellers in Little Britain, and his occupation is given as Bookeseller in the Drapers membership list for the 1641 poll tax. Between 1627 and 1642, Rhodes bound ve apprentices as Drapers, but Thomas Stonehouse, the only one to be freed, was listed as a bookseller in Mercers Chapel in the 1641 poll-tax list.204 Rhodes also had theatrical connections from an early age. John Downes asserted in Roscius Anglicanus that Rhodes had been wardrobe-keeper with the Kings Men at the Blackfriars; he may be the John Rhodes who was a minor actor with the Kings Men in 162425, but this reference may be to the musician John Rhodes who was buried in 1636. Rhodes was certainly associated with the Kings Men by 1629, when he published Lodowick Carlells play The Deserving Favorite under his brother Matthews name.205 Around 1635, Rhodes bought a one-twelfth share in the Fortune playhouse, which he still held in 1649, when he and several other tenants were sued by Dulwich College, the buildings owner, for nonpayment of rent. In 1639 a warrant was issued for Iohn Rodes of ye fortune Playhouse vpon ye complaint of the blackfryers Company for selling their Playes.206 At some point before 1647 Rhodes also became a lessee of the Cockpit in Drury Lane, a position used to his advantage when the playhouses reopened.207
23 April 1656 he gave his age as 50 years and upwards, leading Leslie Hotson to assert that Rhodes was born about 1606 (Hotson, 99100). 202 Drapers Apprentice Bindings 16031658 (MS +287/F.B. 1), p. 72; Freedom List 15671656 (MS +278/F.A. 1), p. 186. 203 D. F. McKenzie, Stationers Company Apprentices, 16051640 (Charlottesville: Bibliographical Society of the University of Virginia, 1961), 15. The Stationers binding record of Matthew Rhodes identies his father as John Rhodes, clerk, of London, deceased. 204 Bentley provides a partial summary of Rhodess career and, unless otherwise noted, is my source for facts in this summary ( Jacobean and Caroline Stage, 2:54445). Stonehouse was bound on 20 June 1627 for eight years and freed 13 May 1635 (Drapers Apprentice Bindings 16151634 (MS +288/F.B. 2). The 1641 poll-tax list was printed by A. H. Johnson, A History of the Worshipful Company of Drapers of London, 5 vols. (London: Clarendon Press, 191422), 4:12971. 205 See Bentley, Jacobean and Caroline Stage, 3:11516; and John Downes, Roscius Anglicanus (London, 1708), 17. On 7 March 1653, the Stationers Register transferred John Rhodess right to The Deseruing Fauourite Written by Lodowick Carlell Esqr. formerly printed in the name of Matthew Rhodes his Brother, but for the vse & benete of the said Iohn Rhodes to Humphrey Moseley. The verse epistle in the 1629 edition is signed with John Rhodess initials. 206 Bentley, Jacobean and Caroline Stage, 2:545. 207 On 28 June 1641, Rhodes testied that he had known Mathias and Thomas Alleyn, from whom he bought his Fortune share, for about six years (Beale v. Dulwich College, PRO C24/663/11); see
45
After binding no apprentices for a dozen years, Rhodes suddenly bound four within a period of four years: Edward Kynaston, son of Thomas Kynaston of Oswestry, Shropshire (bound on 5 July 1654 for nine years); Edward Angell, son of John Angell of St. Martin in the Fields, London (bound on 15 October 1656 for nine years); Christopher Williams, son of Henry Williams of Waltham Abbey, Essex (bound on 10 December 1656, for eight years); and John Nash, son of John Nash of Clerkenwell, Middlesex (bound on 2 August 1658 for eight years).208 In early 1660, with the Protectorate crumbling and the Restoration imminent, Rhodes assembled a company to perform plays at the Cockpit, among whom were his apprentices Edward Kynaston and Edward Angell.209 John Downes wrote that both Kynaston and Angell played female roles in this company, and there is considerable contemporary evidence that Kynaston was famous as a performer of womens parts. On 7 January 1661 Samuel Pepys saw Kynaston play the title role in Ben Jonsons Epicne, declaring him both the prettiest woman in the whole house and the handsomest [man] in the house.210 But the introduction of actresses on the London stage in late 1660 eliminated the need for boy apprentices to play those parts, and the establishment of a twocompany monopoly under Thomas Killigrew and Sir William Davenant (neither playing at the Cockpit) undercut Rhodess inuence. Kynaston had ceased playing female roles by 1662 at the latest, and the fact that he was married on 27 February of that year indicates that he was no longer apprenticed to Rhodes. By that time Kynaston was a member of the Kings Company, while Rhodes had apparently gone to the rival Dukes Company, for he was paid for a court performance by that company on 1 November 1662. Among the actors in this performance were Cave Underhill, son of Draper Nicholas Underhill, whom Rhodes had probably known
also his deposition in the 1649 lawsuit (Lisle v. Dulwich College, PRO C24/728/90). For his lease of the Cockpit, see Wickham, Berry, and Ingram, eds., 626, citing PRO C2/Charles I/H44/66 (dated 9 July 1647). 208 Drapers Apprentice Bindings 16341655 (MS +289/F.B. 3) and Apprentice Bindings 16551689 (MS +290/F.B. 4), both unpaginated. The establishment of Kynastons parentage conrms a note in the Burney Collection at the British Library which says that he was born on 20 April 1643. On that date Edward, son of Thomas Kynaston, was born at Oswestry, Shropshire (Oswestry parish register, Shropshire Records and Research Centre MS P214/A/1/1). 209 Thomas Betterton was also a member of this company, and Charles Gildon claimed that Betterton was also Rhodess apprentice, with Kynaston as his under-apprentice. But Betterton does not appear in the Drapers records, and Betterton himself told Alexander Pope that he had been apprenticed not to Rhodes but to John Holden, who was free of the Stationers. See Highll, Burnim, and Langhans, 9:7985 and 1:8385; and Charles Gildon, The Life of Mr. Thomas Betterton (London, 1710), 5. 210 Robert Latham and William Matthews, eds., The Diary of Samuel Pepys, 11 vols. (Berkeley and Los Angeles: U of California P, 197083), 2:7.
46
with the Kings Men in the late 1620s; Rhodess apprentice Edward Angell; and a previously unknown Williams, probably Rhodess apprentice Christopher Williams.211 Rhodes had one nal occasion as a theatrical entrepreneur. On 2 January 1664 he was granted a license to perform Comedyes Historyes Tragedyes Enterludes Morralls Pastoralls Stage Playes Maskes & Showes anywhere in the kingdom except London and Westminster.212 The membership of this traveling company is unknown, but within the next three years Rhodes bound two more apprentices, who presumably performed onstage: Thomas Packwood, son of Christopher Packwood of London (bound on 12 April 1665 for seven years), and John Rix, son of John Rix of London, deceased (bound on 17 December 1666 for seven years). In 1667 Rhodes stopped paying quarterage dues to the Drapers for the rst time since 1625, but he was apparently still living in 1669, when he was sued by John Fall.213 After that he disappears from the record, his long and colorful career nally over. The disruptions of the Civil War had badly damaged the English apprenticeship system. Eventually, with boy apprentices no longer needed on the professional stage, the importance of livery companies in the pre-Restoration theater was simply forgotten. Some modern historians have glimpsed this importance, however. In Impersonations, Stephen Orgel posits a theatrical apprenticeship system remarkably similar to the one documented here, and he insightfully discusses the systems large ideological implications in terms of players desire for respectability and in terms of the social status of boys and women.214 However, Orgel provides no documentary evidence for this system, whose existence he mostly infers from Baldwin and Chambers. I hope that the documentation in the preceding pages has not only established the outlines of the apprenticeship system used in the Elizabethan professional theater but has also provided a foundation for further discoveries.
Hotson, 21415. I am indebted to Paula Backscheider for rst suggesting the identication of this Williams with Rhodess apprentice. The fourth apprentice bound by Rhodes in the 1650s, John Nash, cannot be traced with any of Rhodess companies, but he may be the rope-dancer of that name who was active in the 1670s; see Highll, Burnim, and Langhans, 10:414. 212 Judith Milhous and Robert D. Hume, eds., A Register of English Theatrical Documents 16601737, comp. and ed. Judith Milhous and Robert D. Hume, 2 vols. (Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois UP, 1991), 1:106. 213 See Drapers' Apprentice Bindings 16551689 (MS +290/F.B. 4) (bindings of Packwood and Rix); and Milhous and Hume, eds., 1:106. 214 Stephen Orgel, Impersonations: The Performance of Gender in Shakespeares England (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996), 6474, esp. 67; and personal communication, 23 October 2002.
211
APPENDIX: ALPHABETICAL LIST OF THEATRICAL FREEMEN AND APPRENTICES

Name Adson, John (musician) Allam, William (boy) Alleyn, John (actor?) Angell, Edward (boy) Armin, Robert (actor) Barry, Lording (playwright) Bartlett, William (boy) Bedell, Michael (boy) Beeland, Ambrose (musician) Belte, Thomas (boy) Browne, George (boy) Bugge, John (actor) Burbage, James (actor) Burgh, George (boy) Cane, Andrew (actor) Catesby, Edward (boy) Catlin, John (boy?) Collins, Jeffrey (musician) Cooke, Alexander (actor) Crane, William (boy leader) Crosse, Nicholas (boy) Downton, Thomas (actor) Drew, Thomas (actor) Dutton, John (actor) Dutton, Lawrence (actor) Errington, Richard (actor) Evans, Henry (boy leader) Gibbins, Thomas (boy?) Goodale, Thomas (actor) Goodwin, Thomas (musician) Goughe, Thomas (actor) Guest, Ellis (actor) Hammerton, Stephen (boy) Haynes, Walter (boy) Haywarde, Richard (boy?) Heminges, John (actor) Heywood, John (boy leader) Hilton, John (boy?) Company Musicians Merch. Taylors Innholders Drapers Goldsmiths Goldsmiths Fishmongers Apothecaries Goldsmiths Drapers Grocers Apothecaries Apothecaries Joiners Grocers Goldsmiths Merch. Taylors Bricklayers Farriers Grocers Mercers Grocers Vintners Fishmongers Weavers Weavers Pewterers Scriveners Goldsmiths Mercers Farriers Barber-Surgeons Pewterers Merch. Taylors Grocers Vintners Grocers Stationers Mercers Goldsmiths Bound (master) 23 Jan 1616 (Walpole) 15 Oct 1656 (Rhodes) 13 Oct 1581 Michaelmas 1582 before 1630 (Bugge) 24 Jan 1612 (Lowin) 3 Sep 1619 (s) 12 Nov 1595 (Heminges) 25 Mar 1630 (Bugge) 14 Dec 1620 before 1576 4 Jul 1610 (Heminges) 24 Aug 1602 23 Jan 1616 (Walpole) 29 Jun 1612 ( Jonson) 26 Jan 1597 (Heminges) 25 May 1614 (Heminges) 13 Feb 1618 (r) 11 Oct 1619 (p) before 1573 before 1573 c. 1609 (p?) 26 Aug 1567 (s) before 1593 (p?) before 1619 7 Oct 1572 (s) 161213 (s) 25 Jan 1611 (s) Freed (method)* before 1614 15 Mar 1624 (s) betw. 157680 (p?)
27 Jan 1604 (s) before 1610 (p)
before 1626 22 Mar 1609 (s) 12 May 1526 (r?)
1561 22 Nov 1633 (Cane)
16056 5 Dec 1631 28 Mar 1610 (Cooke) 14 Oct 1584 (Tarlton) 25 May 1578
24 Apr 1587 (s) 1523 (r?) 30 Jan 1530 (t)
7 Jan 1612 (Cane)
* Parenthetic abbreviations p, r, s, and t stand for patrimony, redemption, servitude, and translation.
Name Holcombe, Thomas (boy) Hunnis, William (boy leader) Hunter, Thomas (musicians) Jeffes, Anthony (actor) Jeffrey, Thomas (boy?) Jones, James (boy/actor) Jonson, Ben (playwright) Kendall, Thomas (boy leader) Keysar, Robert (boy leader) King, Richard (boy?) Kynaston, Edward (boy) Levasher, John (musician) Lowin, John (actor) Maller, George (actor) Mannery, Samuel (boy) Martin, Charles (boy) Munday, Anthony (writer) Nash, John (boy?) Newton, John (actor) Packwood, Thomas (boy?) Pallant, Robert (boy) Patricke, William (boy?) Peirson, Thomas (boy?) Perry, William (actor) Pusey, Hugh (boy?) Rhodes, John (sharer) Rix, John (boy?) Rubbidge, Rowland (musician) Saunders, William (musician) Savadge, Henry (boy?) Savill, Arthur (boy) Shank, John (actor) Sharpe, Richard (boy/actor) Slater, Martin (actor) Stayne, Thomas (boy?) Tarlton, Richard (actor)
Trigge, William (boy/actor) Tunstall, James (actor) Underhill, Nicholas (musician)
Company Bound (master) Grocers 22 Apr 1618 (Heminges) Grocers Drapers 16 Oct 1616 Brewers Goldsmiths 15 Apr 1614 (Lowin) Goldsmiths 15 Jul 1608 (Armin) Drapers 10 Jul 1611 (Perry) Bricklayers Haberdashers Goldsmiths Michaelmas 1591 Fishmongers 8 Dec 1623 (Drew) Drapers 5 Jul 1654 (Rhodes) Drapers 19 Feb 1623 Goldsmiths Christmas 1593 Merch. Taylors Farriers 1 Aug 1629 (Goodwin) Drapers 20 Nov 1611 (Perry) Stationers 1 Oct 1576 Drapers Drapers 2 Aug 1658 (Rhodes) Haberdashers 23 Jul 1604 Drapers 12 Apr 1665 (Rhodes) Grocers 9 Feb 1620 (Heminges) Grocers 10 Dec 1628 (Heminges) Drapers 29 Aug 1610 (Perry) Drapers Goldsmiths 22 Jun 1627 (Cane) Drapers 22 May 1611 Drapers 17 Dec 1666 (Rhodes) Musicians Musicians Merch. Taylors 11 Mar 1622 (Walpole) Goldsmiths 5 Aug 1631 (Cane) Weavers Grocers 21 Feb 1616 (Heminges) Ironmongers 17 Jan 1581 Goldsmiths 20 Jul 1621 (Cane) Haberdashers before 1569 Vintners Totnell, Henry (actor) 20 Jan 1562 (s) Grocers 20 Dec 1625 (Heminges) Saddlers Drapers 13 Oct 1620 (Beeland)
Freed (method) 11 Nov 1560 (r) 26 Mar 1628 (s) 14 Apr 1605 (r)
Michaelmas 1594 1587 (s) 9 Oct 1598 (s)
10 Mar 1630 (s) 16012 (s) before 1530
21 Jun 1585 (p) 1611 (s)
16 Jul 1604 (s) 18 Sep 1635 (s) 16 Mar 1625 (s) before 1604 before 1634 19 Jul 1639 (s) before 1600 late 1587 (s) 29 Sep 1576 (s) 4 Oct 1584 (r) Barber-Surgeons 11 Jul 1632 (p) before 1599 (p?) 22 Feb 1632 (s)
Name Vernon, George (boy/actor) Walley, William (boy) Walpole, Francis (actor) Webster, John (playwright) Williams, Christopher (boy) Wilson, John (boy/actor) Woodford, Thomas (invest.) Worth, Ellis (actor) Wright, John (boy/actor) Young, John (actor)
Company Goldsmiths Apothecaries Merch. Taylors Merch. Taylors Drapers Grocers Grocers Merch. Taylors Goldsmiths Mercers
Bound (master) 9 May 1617 (Lowin) 11 May 1629 (Bugge) 23 Apr 1599 10 Dec 1656 (Rhodes) 18 Feb 1611 (Heminges)
Freed (method)
30 Jun 1606 (s) 19 Jun 1615 (p) 29 Oct 1621 (s) 20 Jun 1598 (p) 30 Jan 1639 (p) 13 Mar 1646 (s) 1534 (s)
27 Nov 1629 (Cane)

David Kathman, Grocers, Goldsmiths, and Drapers

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Grocers, Goldsmiths, and Drapers: Freemen and Apprentices in the Elizabethan Theater

FREEMEN AND APPRENTICES IN ELIZABETHAN THEATER

FREEMEN AND APPRENTICES IN ELIZABETHAN THEATER

John Wright adds the following details:

FREEMEN AND APPRENTICES IN ELIZABETHAN THEATER

FREEMEN AND APPRENTICES IN ELIZABETHAN THEATER

FREEMEN AND APPRENTICES IN ELIZABETHAN THEATER

FREEMEN AND APPRENTICES IN ELIZABETHAN THEATER

FREEMEN AND APPRENTICES IN ELIZABETHAN THEATER

A SURVEY OF THEATRICAL FREEMEN, 15201642

FREEMEN AND APPRENTICES IN ELIZABETHAN THEATER

FREEMEN AND APPRENTICES IN ELIZABETHAN THEATER

FREEMEN AND APPRENTICES IN ELIZABETHAN THEATER

FREEMEN AND APPRENTICES IN ELIZABETHAN THEATER

FREEMEN AND APPRENTICES IN ELIZABETHAN THEATER

FREEMEN AND APPRENTICES IN ELIZABETHAN THEATER

FREEMEN AND APPRENTICES IN ELIZABETHAN THEATER

FREEMEN AND APPRENTICES IN ELIZABETHAN THEATER

FREEMEN AND APPRENTICES IN ELIZABETHAN THEATER

FREEMEN AND APPRENTICES IN ELIZABETHAN THEATER

FREEMEN AND APPRENTICES IN ELIZABETHAN THEATER

FREEMEN AND APPRENTICES IN ELIZABETHAN THEATER

FREEMEN AND APPRENTICES IN ELIZABETHAN THEATER

FREEMEN AND APPRENTICES IN ELIZABETHAN THEATER

FREEMEN AND APPRENTICES IN ELIZABETHAN THEATER

APPENDIX: ALPHABETICAL LIST OF THEATRICAL FREEMEN AND APPRENTICES

27 Jan 1604 (s) before 1610 (p)

before 1626 22 Mar 1609 (s) 12 May 1526 (r?)

1561 22 Nov 1633 (Cane)

24 Apr 1587 (s) 1523 (r?) 30 Jan 1530 (t)

7 Jan 1612 (Cane)

Trigge, William (boy/actor) Tunstall, James (actor) Underhill, Nicholas (musician)

Michaelmas 1594 1587 (s) 9 Oct 1598 (s)

10 Mar 1630 (s) 16012 (s) before 1530

21 Jun 1585 (p) 1611 (s)

27 Nov 1629 (Cane)

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