obscure reason the political thought of the time was fond of finding an analogue to the Queen. Saturday, 7 February, the day before the outbreak, was chosen for the performance, and the players applied to were the Chamberlain's. A deposition by Augustine Phillips, taken before Chief Justice Popham and Justice Fenner during the subsequent inquiries, records the transaction.[1]
'The Examination of Augustine Phillips, servant unto the L. Chamberlain
and one of his players, taken the xviij^{th} of February, 1600,
upon his oath.
'He saith that on Friday last was sennight or Thursday Sir Charles Percy Sir Josceline Percy and the Lord Mounteagle with some three more spoke to some of the players in the presence of this Examinate to have the play of the deposing and killing of King Richard the Second to be played the Saturday next, promising to get them xls. more than their ordinary to play it. Where this Examinate and his fellows were determined to have played some other play, holding that play of King Richard to be so old and so long out of use that they should have small or no company at it. But at their request this Examinate and his fellows were content to play it the Saturday and had their xl^s more than their ordinary for it, and so played it accordingly.'
The fact that Phillips speaks of the play as old and long out
of use, which becomes in the narrative of Camden 'exoleta
tragoedia', hardly justifies the suggestion that it was something
earlier than Shakespeare's Richard II. This, if produced
in 1596, may well have been off the boards by 1601.
A good deal of misunderstanding has gathered round the connexion of the Chamberlain's men with this affair. Mr. Fleay is responsible for the theory that they fell into disgrace, had to travel, and were excluded from the Court festivities of the following Christmas.[2] As a matter of fact they played four times during that winter. This Mr. Fleay did not know, as he only had before him Cunningham's incomplete extracts from the accounts of the Treasurer of the Chamber. But he ought to have noticed that their last performance for 1600-1 was itself some days later than the examination of Augustine Phillips. Nor is any evidence that the company travelled in 1601 forthcoming from the provincial archives. Mr. Fleay's identification of them with Laurence Fletcher's
- ↑ S. P. D. Eliz. cclxxviii. 72, 78, 85. Accounts consistent with this are given in depositions of Sir W. Constable and Sir Gilly Meyrick (ibid.), Camden, Annales, 867, Cobbett, State Trials, i. 1445, and Bacon, A Declaration of the Practices and Treasons attempted and committed by Robert late Earl of Essex and his Complices (1601; Works, ix. 289).
- ↑ Fleay, 123, 136; cf. M. L. R. ii. 12.
