Page:The Elizabethan stage (Volume 2).pdf/210

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at Maidstone and Saffron Walden, and on 1 October 1608 they were at Leicester; but a visit of the same year from 'the Princes players of the White Chapple, London' is rather to be assigned to the Duke of York's men (q.v.). They gave three plays before James and Henry during the Christmas of 1608-9, four before James during that of 1609-10, and four before James during that of 1610-11. Middleton and Dekker's The Roaring Girl was printed in 1611 as lately played by them at the Fortune, and Field's Amends for Ladies (c. 1610-11) names 'Long Meg and the Ship' as in their repertory. Presumably their Long Meg of Westminster of 1595 still held the boards.[1] In 1608-9 they were at Shrewsbury and Saffron Walden, in 1609-10 at Shrewsbury and Hereford, in 1610-11 at Shrewsbury and Winchester.

They played at Court before James on 28 and 29 December 1611, giving on the second night The Almanac, and before Henry in February and Elizabeth in April 1612. On 1 October 1612 the lewd jigs, songs, and dances at the Fortune are recited in an order of the Middlesex justices as tending to promote breaches of the peace. One of these may have been the occasion on which an obscure actor, Garlick by name, made himself offensive to the more refined part of his audience.[2] On the following 7 November Henry died and on 7 December his players figured in his funeral procession.[3]

They found a new patron in the Elector Palatine, then in England, and on entering his service got a new patent, which bears date 11 January 1613 and closely follows in its terms that of 1606.[4] The house specified for them was again the Fortune, which they had no doubt continuously occupied since its opening in 1600. The players named were 'Thomas Downton, William Bird, Edward Juby, Samuell Rowle, Charles Massey, Humfrey Jeffs, Frank Grace, William Cartwright, Edward Colbrand, William Parr, William Stratford, Richard Gunnell, John Shanck, and Richard Price'. Possibly Price may be the Pryor of the 1610 list. Cartwright and Gunnell are new since that list, but Cartwright had been in The Battle of Alcazar and 1 Tamar Cham plots of 1601 and 1602. These two must be supposed to have taken the places of Thomas Towne and Antony Jeffes. Thomas Towne had enjoyed an annuity of £12 out of Alleyn's manor of Dulwich fromwent to see a play at the Fortune, and are not come in yet, and she believes they sup with the players'.]

  1. A. for L. II. i. In III. iv a drawer says, 'all the gentlewomen [from Bess Turnup's
  2. Cf. ch. xv, s.v. Garlick.
  3. Nichols, James, ii. 495.
  4. M. S. C. i. 275, from P. R. 10 Jac. I, pt. 25; also from signet bill in Collier, i. 366, and Hazlitt, E. D. S. 44. Greg (Henslowe, ii. 263) notes copies in Addl. MS. 24502, f. 60^v, and Lincoln's Inn MS. clviii.