THE TWO GREAT COMPANIES. this restriction was not absolutely maintained, the history of the Elisabethan drama proper from the close of the period more immediately under discussion connects itself with that of the two theatrical companies just mentioned. To the Lord Chamberlain's company, which was first settled at the Blackfriars and afterwards-in 1596-built the Globe on the Bankside, Shakspere and Richard Burbadge belonged; the Lord Admiral's was managed by Philip Henslowe and Edward Alleyn, and was ultimately -in 1599-settled at the Fortune in Golding-Lane1. 255 of this event upon dramatic authorship. These brief notes on the history of the English stage Influence need be carried no farther for our present purpose. So long as a number of companies existed, so long as the two most prominent among them were for a time united in so far at least as to play in the same house, the dramatic authors appear to have worked indiscriminately for the wants of many of these companies or of all; the quickest worker was likely to find the most constant employment, and a claim to property in a play must have been as difficult to maintain as a desire for originality must have been rare in dramatic authorship. Hence the famous accusation of Greene against Shakspere-as ordinarily interpreted-may have been well founded, but was in any case absurd. The difficulty in deciding as to the priority of different plays on the same subject is accordingly endless, and it is often futile to endeavour to solve it. But when the two great rival companies were established in a virtual monopoly of the London stage, it became possible for them, in the words of a recent writer 2, 'to establish a history and a character of their own.' Thus, 1 Henslowe's Diary, which extends over the years from 1591-1602 and is an invaluable aid to dramatic chronology, showing 'not only the number of times different plays were acted, but generally the very day when they were acted for the first time,' has been edited by Mr. Collier for the Shakesp. Soc. Publ. (1845). To Mr. Collier's Memoirs of Edward Alleyn I have already made several references. The founder of Dulwich College was born in 1566, and died in 1626. There is no satisfactory proof that he was a dramatic author, but as an actor he attained to the highest reputation. It is improbable that he ever performed in any of Shakspere's plays; on the other hand, he ‘created,' as the French say, the characters of Orlando (in Greene's O. Furioso), of Tamburlaine, and of Barabas. 2 Mr. R. Simpson, u. s., p. iv. Mutual rela tions among the actor authors. in this important respect too, was Shakspere favoured by circumstances-partly of course of his own makingbeyond his predecessors. Among the members of the acting profession, with which dramatic authorship was as we have seen so intimately connected, a kindly mutual good-will must have, as at all times, so more especially under such conditions of existence, perpetually striven for the mastery with eager competition. So peculiar are under any circumstances the conditions of an actor's life, that the greatest allowances should at all times be made for foibles which are nearly inevitable; and there is no profession whose records are so full of memorials of friendly generosity and brotherly kindness, in the midst of endless jealousies. When to the rivalry of actors was added that of authors, when bread and fame were simultaneously involved in the question of comparative success, we may forgive even a Greene his attack upon a Shakspere. The general kindliness of tone which prevailed among the rival actors and authors is shown by many incidental touches of feeling;-no outward sign remains to display it more pleasantly than the familiar usage of abbreviating the Christian names of managers, actors, and authors. Even an eager follower of 'sweete Nedde' (Edward Alleyn), while sneering at 'Rossius Richard' (Burbadge), disarms our disapproval of his jealous partisanship when he declares that when Ned acts, Willes newe playe Shall be rehearst some other daye,'— while at a rather later date, Thomas Heywood, the dramatist who so chivalrously broke a lance in defence of the actor's art, testified in a score of genial lines, which I will permit myself to quote here, to this memorable method of preserving the memory of good fellowship: 'Greene, who had in both Academies ta'ne Degree of Master, yet could never gaine Profest aught but the Muse, serv'd and been free INTERCOURSE WITH GERMANY. 257 Although his Hero and Leander did Merit addition rather. Famous Kid Was called but Tom. Tom Watson, though he wrote Upon his Muse, for all that he could strive, Yet never could to his full name arrive. Of the rar'st wits, was never more than Franck. Fletcher and Webster, of that learned packe And he's now but Jacke Foord that once was John '.' Before quitting the subject of the stage, as connected with the dramatic literature of this period, it is worth while to advert in passing to a question which has only recently received the attention it merits. The English stage and its literature were at this time still largely subject to an influence of considerable significance for the future history of the latter, if not of the former. I have adverted incidentally to the attention directed by at least one English dramatist (Kyd) to the performances of Italian actors in England2; and the continued influence of the Italian drama as well as of Italian and Spanish prose fiction upon our own dramatic literature will receive abundant illustration as we proceed. Until recently, it had been less remembered that in this period a lively connexion prevailed in the drama between England and Germany. English actors had visited the Continent in the train of 1 From T. Heywood's Hierarchy of the Blessed Angels, quoted in the Introd. to his Apology for Actors, Shakesp. Soc. Publ. 1841. It is perhaps worth remarking that this use of abbreviations is not necessarily to be understood as implying kind feeling. See Chapman, The Gentleman Usher (iii. 1) : . 'Nor yet call me Lord, Nor my whole name Vincentio; but Vince, As they calle Jacke or Will, 'tis now in use, 2 The extempore acting of French and Italian players is described, evidently from personal experience, by Middleton, The Spanish Gipsy (iv. 2). S English bishops as early as 1417, when they played before the dignitaries assembled at the Council of Constance; and thus had begun a connexion between the stages and early dramatic literatures of England and Germany destined to exercise the most enduring influence. In the sixteenth century, in the reign of Elisabeth, it was customary for German and Dutch princes to visit England; and the English stage necessarily attracted much of their attention. One of them-in 1596—speaks of four play-houses in London (there were really at least seven); the tutor of another mentions the theatres 'without 'the city' and their numerous audiences. On the other hand, Germany and the Netherlands were from the middle of the same century visited by English musicians and other entertainers in large numbers; and it is certain that Leicester was accompanied by one if not more players when in 1585 he went over to the Netherlands to dazzle their inhabitants by his magnificence, and to disgust them by his impotence. In 1586 five Englishmen who had been sent by Leicester to King Frederick II of Denmark transferred their services to the Court of Christian I, Elector of Saxony; they are called instrumentalists,' but there were actors among them', or they were all actors as well as musicians. Finally, a whole company of English actors crossed the seas under the leadership of Robert Browne in 1590, and after visiting Holland, Zealand, and Friesland, repaired to Germany to exercise their profession. This was probably the company, members of which performed at Wolfenbüttel before Duke Henry Julius of Brunswick-Lüneburg in the years 1602 to 1617, and probably earlier. In 1617 English comedians entered the service of the Elector of Brandenburg. "These facts, established on indisputable evidence, prove 1 Thomas Pope and George Bryan, both of whom appeared on the London stage before 1588, and were afterwards members of the Blackfriars company with Shakspere. 2 The Brunswick exchequer accounts are missing from 1590-1601. The reign of Henry Julius extended from 1589-1613. His plays have been recently published (1855). 3 In A. Cohn's Shakespeare in Germany in the 16th and 17th Centuries (1865). See also the first chapter of R. Genée's Geschichte der Shakespeare'schen Dramen INTERCOURSE WITH GERMANY. the existence, already in the period of Shakspere's predecessors, of a close intercourse between the German and the English stage. This intercourse only reflected in a special way the intimate connexion which the political as well as the literary results of the Reformation had brought about between England and Protestant Germany. The alliance which Henry VIII had shrunk from drawing closely, had been inevitably concluded by the peoples. The Reformers of Edward's reign and the refugees of Mary's had derived much of their intellectual nourishment from German sources; who would have thought that the poor play-actors were to begin the repayment of the debt1? Yet so it was; for although the beginnings of a new German dramatic literature were to prove abortive as an important national growth, they were not unproductive of remarkable literary fruits; and after the days of desolation had passed, German literature was to draw strength from ours in the very quarter where Henry Julius of Brunswick and Jacob Ayrer had joined hands with contemporary English dramatists. It is not, however, of the influence of the English drama upon the German that I have here to speak. On the other hand, the counter-influence of German writers and German subjects, brought home with them by the English comedians, or set in motion by means of their travels, was not inconsiderable. We have seen an instance of it in a work of Marlowe's, and we shall have to return to the subject in connexion with more than one of the plays of Shakspere and his times. Whatever may be the value of the evidence in the case of particular plays, the intercourse adverted to connected our stage and our dramatic literature in their youthful days with those of a nation akin to our own not only in blood and speech, but in the in Deutschland (1870), and K. Elze's Introduction to his edition of Chapman's Alphonsus (Leipzig, 1867). 1 Of Ralph Radclif's tragedy of The Burning of John Huss, which might be regarded as directly connecting the German Reformation with the English drama, it is neither known whether it was in English or Latin, or whether it was founded on the German tragedy by J. Agricola. Radclif flourished under Edward VI, and is mentioned by Bishop Bale in his Script. Illustr. Catal. Cf. -Elze, u. s., pp. 16-17. 259 |