Duke of Wolgast in Pomerania (1592-1625), who had twice visited England, and whose presence at more than one London theatre is recorded in 1602.[1] Two petitions from Jones are in the Stettin archives.[2] On 30 August 1623 he asked permission, with his fellows Johan Kostrassen and Robert Dulandt (Dowland?), to return from Wolgast to England. Behind them they appear to have left Richard Farnaby, son of the better-known composer Giles Farnaby.[3] On 10 July 1624 Jones wrote to the Duke that his hopes of profitable employment under the Prince in England had been disappointed, and asked to be taken back into his service.
All the groups of actors hitherto dealt with seem to have had their origin, more or less directly, in the untiring initiative of Robert Browne. There is, however, another tradition, almost as closely associated with the houses of Brandenburg and Saxony, as the former with those of Hesse-Cassel and Brunswick. Some give and take between Cassel and the Courts of some of the Brandenburg princes has from time to time been noted.[4] But Berlin, where the successive Electors of Brandenburg, Joachim Frederick (1598-1608) and John Sigismund (1608-9), had their capital, was during a long period of years the head-quarters from which an Englishman, John Spencer, undertook extensive travels, both in Protestant and in Catholic Germany. Of Spencer's stage-career in London, if he ever had one, nothing is known. Possibly he betook himself to the Brandenburg Court during the English plague-year of 1603. At any rate, comedians holding a recommendation given by the Elector on 10 August 1604 and confirmed by the Stadtholder of the Netherlands, Maurice Prince of Orange Nassau, in the following December, were at Leyden in January and The Hague in May 1605.[5] It is reasonable to identify them with the company under John Spencer, who received a recommendation from the Electress Eleonora of Brandenburg to the Elector Christian II of Saxony (1591-1611) in the same year.[6] At Dresden they possibly remained for some time, for although there are several anonymous appearances, including the famous ones at Gräz in the winter of 1607-8, which can be conjecturally assigned to them,[7] they do not clearly emerge until April 1608, when a visit of the Electoral players of Saxony is recorded at
- ↑ Cf. ch. xvi, introd.
- ↑ C. F. Meyer in Sh.-Jahrbuch, xxxviii. 208.
- ↑ D. N. B. s.v. Giles Farnaby.
- ↑ Cf. pp. 279, 283.
- ↑ Cohn, lxxviii.
- ↑ Fürstenau, i. 76.
- ↑ Cf. p. 282. Herz, 44, identifies them with 'English' at The Hague (June 1606), Cologne (Feb. 1607), The Hague (April), Ulm (May), Nördlingen (June), and Munich (July).
