sometime
the fiddlesticke of Oxford, now the very bable of London.
Cambridge History of English Literature - 1908 - v06
Henry Condell
was a sidesman of the parish of St Mary's, Aldermanbury, in
1606: his respectability is unimpeachable. But the besetting sins
of the player-luxury, extravagance and intemperate living—for
which Hazlitt found generous excuses in later years, seem to
have existed then as ever. We read much of the player's love
of fine clothes and display. And there can be no doubt that the
frequent interruptions caused by the plague, the deterrent action
of such managers as Henslowe and the notorious uncertainty of
theatrical affairs, resulted in much poverty and distress among
lesser actors and lesser companies. Those on tour, especially,
suffered hardships, being forced to pawn their wardrobe, to 'pad
the hoof' instead of riding from town to town and to beg, instead
of play, for their keep. The extremes of the profession were as
far apart then as now; but the age of Elizabeth and James un-
doubtedly raised it as a whole into respect as well as popularity;
and the outspoken envy of those—by no means all of puritanical
bent—who railed at the pride and display of actors was the natural
result of the advance which the period witnessed. During the
reign of Charles, the greater prevalence of the plague, the shadow
of coming troubles and the deterioration of the drama itself caused
something of a decline, and the rebellion brought all to a close.
1 Wallace, u. s. , calculates Shakespeare's yearly profits from the Globe as never
exceeding £300, and a similar amount from the Blackfriars.
1
1
## p. 279 (#297) ############################################
CHAPTER XI
THE CHILDREN OF THE CHAPEL ROYAL
AND THEIR MASTERS
THE Chapel Royal and its relations to the history of drama
in England form an extremely puzzling and interesting subject
of enquiry. The origin of the chapel is lost in unrecorded
antiquity, the date of its earliest histrionic efforts is uncertain
and the records of its later activity are woefully incomplete. But
it entered the histrionic field early; it was, if we may trust the
extant records, a pioneer in the production of some important
kinds of plays; some of its authors seem to have set fashions
in dramatic composition; and Shakespeare himself honoured its
rivalry with one of the few clear notices of things contemporary
that we have from his pen.
Of the membership and organisation of the chapel in the
earliest times, we have not any systematic account; but, under
Edward IV, according to Liber Niger Domus Regis, it consisted
of a dean, twenty-four chaplains, two yeomen, eight children,
a master of song and a master of the grammar school. Later,
a sub-dean was added, the number of boys was increased to
twelve, and there were various increases in the number of chaplains,
or gentlemen of the chapel, to say nothing of the long list of
probationers awaiting vacancies among the gentlemen; but these
changes affected the size and not the functions of the institution.
It has always been an organisation primarily for the celebration
of divine service in the royal household, and its functions in its
earliest years, as during the last three centuries, were, perhaps,
limited strictly to this primary purpose.
But under the Tudor sovereigns, if not earlier, notable unofficial
additions were made to its functions. Both the gentlemen and
the children took part, frequently if not regularly, in the pageants,
masques and plays produced at Christmas and on other festal
## p. 280 (#298) ############################################
280
The Chapel Royal
occasions. During the reigns of Henry VII and Henry VIII, the
gentlemen seem to have figured in pageants and plays nearly as
often as the children; but their histrionic career seems to have
ceased early, perhaps because even then such frivolous perform-
ances seemed inappropriate to gentlemen ‘endowed,' as Liber
Niger specifies, 'with virtues morolle and specikative, as of the
musicke, shewinge in descante, eloquent in readinge, suffytyente
in organes playinge. ' It is very probable, indeed, that the histrionic
activity of the gentlemen began with morality plays and pageants
presenting moral allegories, and ceased soon after the drama and
other amusements of the court took a more secular turn. The
histrionic career of the children-possibly because they were
children—continued longer. In 1569, to be sure, they were
attacked in a pamphlet entitled The Children of the Chapel Stript
and Whipt:
Even in her majesties chappel do these pretty upstart youthes profane the
Lordes Day by the lascivious writhing of their tender limbs, and gorgeous
decking of their apparell, in feigning bawdie fables gathered from the
idolatrous heathen poets;
but it was not until the following century that the children ceased
to act. It is with the children, therefore, rather than the gentlemen,
that we are here concerned.
The earliest record relating to the children and their master1
that has been found is the commission (12 July 1440)
to the king's clerk, Master John Croucher, dean of the Chapel within the
king's household, to take throughout England such and so many boys as he or
his deputies shall see to be fit and able to serve God and the King in the said
Royal Chapel
We have here no mention of anyone specially delegated for the
training and supervision of the boys, and it is possible, though
6
1 In his introduction to The Old Cheque Book of the Chapel Royal, Rimbault
says : The earliest facts on record relating to the “King's Chapel" are contained in
the Liber Niger Domus Regis, a man
:
anuscript of the time of Edward IV'; and this
statement has been taken by later writers to mean that we have no earlier notice of
the organisation. There exists, however, in the Patent Rolls, a long series of earlier
notices, beginning with the mention of "Thomas de Lynton, Dean of the Chapel of the
King's Household,' 20 August 1380. Among the most important of these are: the
notice of John Boor as dean in 1389; the acquittance (10 March 1403) “to Richard
Kyngeston, late dean of the King's Chapel within the household, who received divers
jewels, vestments, . . . , for the same from John Boor, late Dean of the Chapel of
Richard II by indenture, and has delivered them to Richard Prentys, now dean. . . ';
various licences to Prentys in 1406 and 1412; and the commission, 20 November
1433, to distribute among the clerks who had been in the chapel of Henry V the sum
of £200, bequeathed to them in his will.
## p. 281 (#299) ############################################
Series of Masters
281
unlikely, that there was no such officer, and that there had been
no children in the chapel choir before this time, or, at least, no
special official recognition of them. These suppositions, however,
may be thought to derive a certain support from the next two
entries : 4 November 1444, a
grant to John Plummer, one of the clerks of the King's Chapel, for the
exhibition of eight boys of the Chapel and for his reward, of 40 marks yearly,
from Michaelmas last, so long as he have the keeping of the said boys or
others in their place, from the ulnage of woollen cloth for sale and from a
moiety of the forfeiture thereof in the town and suburbs of Bristol;
24 February 1445, a
grant, during good behaviour, to the king's serjeant John Plummer, one of
the clerks of the Chapel, for his daily labours in the teaching and rule of the
king's boys of the Chapel, of the said teaching, rule and governance.
This grant was surrendered 30 May 1446 for another of the same
tenor. In any event, the first master of the children was not,
as is commonly supposed, Henry Abyndon, for he was certainly
preceded by John Plummer.
From 1465, the series of masters can be made out with tolerable
completeness and certainty. On 2 July 1465, there was a
grant to the king's servitor Henry Abyndon of 40 marks yearly from Michael-
mas last from the issues of the county of Wilts for the provision of clothing
and other necessary apparel of the boys of the Chapel of the king's household
and for their instruction and governance, so long as he shall have the said
provision, instruction and governance;
and this grant was renewed 14 February 1471. It is not yet
ascertained when Henry Abyndon (or Abingdon) ceased to be
master; but, on 6 February 1479, a
grant was made to Gilbert Banaster of 40 marks yearly from the petty custom
in the port of London and ports and places adjacent for the maintenance,
instruction and governance of the boys of the Chapel of the household from
Michaelmas last, on which day he undertook these, so long as he shall have
the same.
When Banaster's successor was appointed does not appear; but
this successor was almost certainly not William Cornish, as is
commonly supposed. Cornish, as we shall see, was the successor
of William Newark! Newark was granted a corrody from the
priory of St Mary, Thetford, at some date prior to 23 November
* It is, of course, very unlikely that Cornish preceded Newark, was replaced by
him and then succeeded him. That Cornish was master in 1493 seems to be one of
Collier's unjustified inferences.
## p. 282 (#300) ############################################
282
The Chapel Royal
>
1480; nevertheless, in the document of this date he is not called
master of the children but one of the gentlemen of the King's
Chapel,' and in the grant (6 April 1485) of a yearly rent of £20 from
the king's manor of Bletchingley, county Surrey, he is spoken of
only as 'the King's servant. ' It is, however, clear that he was the
predecessor of Cornish as master of the children. On 23 May 1509,
he was appointed 'gentleman of the Chapel in the royal household
and master of the boys of the Chapel, during pleasure. ' As this
was scarcely more than a month after the king's accession, and as
he was already a gentleman of the chapel in 1480, the appoint-
ment, doubtless, was only a renewal of one made in the pre-
ceding reign. On 12 November 1509, he is mentioned as lately
deceased; but the appointment of his successor seems, for some
reason, to have been delayed for several years, for among the ‘Fees
and Annuities Paid by the King in 1516' occurs a record of
£26. 138. 4d. to 'W. Cornyshe, Master of the Children of the
Chapel, Vice W. Newark, during pleasure,' and it seems improbable
that Newark would have been mentioned if any master had come
between him and Cornish, or if Cornish had held the appointment
since Newark's death? Cornish is mentioned as late deceased on
? .
7 November 1524, and he seems to have been succeeded, though
not immediately, by William Crane, who had long been one of the
gentlemen of the chapel. Crane's appointment as master of the
children is dated 12 May 1526. His immediate successor was
Richard Bower. The official appointment was made 31 October
1545, but it was to date from 30 June 1545, since which time he
has by the king's command exercised the office. ' Whether Crane
was then dead or not, is not certain. In the 'Augmentations,'
a William Crane, apparently the person here in question, is
recorded as receiving his annuity on 8 May and 16 October 1545,
and there is a later record of payment of an annuity out of St Ed-
mondesburye to a William Crane in 1546. It seems, however, prob-
a
able that there were two William Cranes, whose names appear in the
records of these years, as there seems also to have been a Richard
Bowyer (alias Styrley, or Strylly, or Strelley) who has sometimes
been confused with Richard Bower, gentleman of the chapel and
master of the children. According to the entry in The Old Cheque
Book of the Chapel Royal, Bower died 26 July 1563; but Stow
a
1 Of Clement Adams, who is said (Babees Boke, p. lxxvi) to have been master of
the children in 1516, no such record can be found. John Melyonek and Philip Van
Wilder are also sometimes given as masters, in 1484 and 1550 respectively; but they
were merely commissioned to take up singers for the chapel.
## p. 283 (#301) ############################################
Dramatic Work of the Earlier Masters 283
gives 1561 as the year, and this seems supported by the fact that,
on 4 December 1561, a commission to take up children for the
chapel was issued to Richard Edwards, who is expressly called
master of the children. Edwards, perhaps the most famous of the
masters, did not long enjoy his office, as he died 31 October 1566.
He was succeeded by William Hunnis (erroneously called Thomas
and John in contemporary documents), who served until his death,
6 June 1597. With Nathaniel Giles, who was appointed master
three days later, our interest in the masters of the children ceases,
for he was the last under whom the boys were permitted to act.
Not only did the boys who acted cease, at the accession of James,
to be called children of the chapel and become children of the
queen's revels; but, when in 1626, Giles was commissioned to take
up boys for the king's chapel, it was expressly provided
that none of the said Choristers or Children of the Chappell, soe to be taken
by force of this commission, shal be used or imployed as Comedians, or Stage
Players, . . . for that it is not fitt or desent that such as should sing the praises
of God Almighty should be trained or imployed in such lascivious and
prophane exercises.
The importance of the children of the chapel in dramatic
history is due, in part, to their histrionic success and, in part, to the
success of some of their masters, and other authors who wrote for
them, in dramatic composition. Of the work of the earlier masters,
we, of course, know very little. Gilbert Banaster is commonly
credited with dramatic composition on the basis of Warton's
remark that he wrote in English verse the Miracle of saint
Thomas, in the year 1467’; but a miracle is not necessarily a
miracle-play. William Cornish seems, however, from the entries
in the 'Household Book of Henry VIII,' to have composed some
of the plays produced by the boys under his direction. If the
story of Troylous and Pandor,' performed by him and the children
before the king at Eltham, Christmas 1515, was written by him, he
may be regarded as the earliest known dramatiser of romantic
fiction. Ward suggests that this may have been merely a pageant;
but there is no evidence that it was customary to use similar
stories as the subjects of pageants, though, undoubtedly, as the
list of costumes and the number of actors—fifteen-indicate, this
play was highly spectacular. But pageants usually bore such
titles as 'the Golldyn Arber in the Arche yerd of Plesyer'
(13 February 1511), ‘Dangerus Fortrees' (9 March 1511), or the
Pavyllyon un [on] the Plas Parlos' (6 January 1515), and the
'accounts' usually contain elaborate descriptions of the pageant
6
6
## p. 284 (#302) ############################################
284
The Chapel Royal
features. Moreover, it should be remembered that, not long after
this, plays on similar subjects were not uncommon, though, unfor-
tunately, only one of them has been preserved to us. It seems,
therefore, only fair to ascribe more importance to this record than
has usually been done, and to regard Cornish as a pioneer in the
production, if not in the composition, of romantic drama. The
interlude called 'the triumpe of Love and Bewte,' 'wryten and
presentyd by Mayster Cornyshe and oothers of the Chappell . . .
and the chyldern of the sayd Chapell, Christmas 1514, was of a
more conventional character, and can hardly have been more than
an allegorical pageant, with words and music. It should, perhaps,
be mentioned that Cornish had the devising of the pageants on
Sunday night at the Field of the Cloth of Gold.
Whether William Crane was an author is unknown. He was
certainly a man of much business; in 1523, letters of protection
were granted him as gentleman of the king's household, alias
gentleman of the chapel, alias comptroller of the petty custom of
the port of London, alias, of London, draper; and, at various times,
he was granted permission to import woad and wine and to export
double beer, and he was appointed to furnish five of the king's
ships. He seems to have been a favourite of the king, and received
many grants in addition to his salary and allowances.
Richard Bower's claim to rank as a dramatic author depends,
so far as we know, upon his identification with the ‘R. B. ' who
wrote Apius and Virginia'. This, though by no means certain,
seems highly probable. We have no earlier copy of the play than
that printed in 1575; but it was entered in the Stationers' register
in 1567/8, and seems, from the allusion to the sweating sickness,
to have been written not later than 1551, the last year, according to
Creighton, of the occurrence of this epidemic in England. Whether
written by Bower or not, the play obviously belongs to a group of
plays which show certain similarities in motives and technique.
The group includes, besides this play, Edwards’s Damon and
Pithias (and, probably, also his lost Palamon and Arcyte), Ful-
well's Like wil to like, Pikeryng's Horestes, Wapull's The Tyde
taryeth no Man, Preston's Cambises, the anonymous Common
Conditions, and Syr Clyomon and Syr Clamydes and, perhaps,
some others. One has only to read these plays in succession to be
struck with their mutual resemblances. Most notable, perhaps, are
the large amount of attention given in them to “stage business'and
the provision of action; the use, in several of them, of unrelated
1 As to this play, cf. ante, vol. V, chap. IV, pp. 63-65.
## p. 285 (#303) ############################################
Preston's Cambises
285
comic scenes for the same purpose; the similarity of the rustic
characters which appear in most of them; the use, in most of
them, of a Vice who plays with both hands,' inciting to evil or
folly and then aiding in its punishment; the curious warnings to
the audience to beware of 'Cosin Cutpurse'; and the no less
curious allusions to the 'trump of fame. These characteristics
are less marked in the work of Edwards than in the other plays;
but this may be due to his greater independence and originality.
The group would seem to have originated with Apius and Virginia.
If this be the case, we may attribute the existence of the group
to the prestige of the children of the chapel and their masters.
In regard to one of these plays, a word may be permitted,
although it does not strictly belong to this chapter. We
know from the title-page of Cambises, that it was written by
Thomas Preston, and it is universally assumed that this was the
Thomas Preston who gained the favour of Elizabeth on her visit
to Cambridge in 1564. Commentators on A Midsummer Night's
Dream have not only recognised that Shakespeare ridiculed this
play, but have also seen in the lamentations of Flute over Bottom's
loss of sixpence a day for life an allusion to the pension given by
the queen to Preston on her memorable visit. The fact need not
be insisted upon that sixpence a day is a different thing from the
£20 a year granted to Preston ? , but it seems not amiss to point
out that Preston's two Latin orations were the prime basis of the
queen's pension and choice of him as her scholar. Nor does it
seem very probable that the distinguished scholar, who was fellow
of King's college in 1556, B. A. in 1557, M. A. in 1561 (and incor-
porated M. A. at Oxford in 1566) and proctor of his college in 1565,
who was directed by the authorities in 1572 to study civil law and,
four years later, to proceed to the degree of LL. D. and who
became master of Trinity hall in 1584, should have published, in
1569 and 1570, Cambises and the two ballads entitled :
A geleflower gentle or swete mary golde
Where in the frutes of terannye you may beholde
and
A Lamentation from Rome how the Pope doth bewayle
The Rebelles in England cannot prevayle.
Surely the Preston of Cambridge would not have published these
things; or, if he had, neither he nor his publishers would have
failed to print his academic titles.
As to Cambises, see ante, vol. v, chap. iv, pp. 63–65.
? It is, perhaps, more to the point to observe that 6d. a day was exactly the wages of
the yeoman of the queen’s revels, while the master received only £10 a year.
## p. 286 (#304) ############################################
286
The Chapel Royal
So much is known of Richard Edwards and William Hunnis
that only the briefest notice of them can be given in the space
available here? It may suffice to say that Edwards was a university
man (as Richard Bower may also have been) and Hunnis obtained,
in some way, the equivalent of a university training. Both were
celebrated by contemporary writers as authors of dramatic and
of non-dramatic works, the fame of Edwards lasting till 1598,
though his death occurred in 1566. Non-dramatic writings from
the pens of both have been preserved; of their dramatic com-
positions, we have only Edwards’s Damon and Pithias, though
chance has preserved for us a very detailed account of his other
known play, Palamon and Arcyte, produced at Oxford in 15662.
Mrs Stopes has suggested that Hunnis was the author of the
Tragedie of the King of Scots, produced by the children in 1567,
the first recorded performance after his succession to the master-
ship, and of several others of the plays produced under his super-
vision. Among these were Narcissus, 1571, the History of
Loyaltie and Bewtie, 1579, the History of Alucius, 1579, and
a satirical Comedie or Morrall devised on A game of the Cardes,
1582. Probable as the suggestion is, we have no means of veri-
fying it. But the accounts of Edwards's Palamon and Hunnis's
Narcissus indicate that, as stage managers, they carried on the
traditions of the group of plays discussed above. The two passages
are so interesting in themselves and so important in their bearing
upon the history of the stage that they may be quoted briefly :
In the said play [Palamon and Arcyte) was acted a cry of hounds in the
Quadrant, upon the train of a fox in the hunting of Theseus, with which the
young scholars, who stood in the windows, were so much taken (supposing it
was real), that they cried out, 'Now, now ! -there, there! -he's caught, he's
caught! ' All which the Queen merrily beholding, said, “O, excellent! these
boys, in very troth, are ready to leap out of the windows, to follow the hounds. '
This part, it seems, being repeated before certain courtiers, in the lodgings of
Mr Robert Marbeck, one of the Canons of Christ Church, by the players in
their gowns (for they were all Scholars that acted) before the Queen came to
Oxford, was by them so well liked, that they said it far surpassed Damon and
Pithias, than which they thought nothing could be better. Likewise some
said, that if the author did any more before his death, he would run mad: but
this comedy was the last he made; for he died a few months after. In the
acting of the said play, there was a good part performed by the lady Amelia,
who, for gathering her flowers prettily in a garden then represented, and
singing sweetly in the time of March, received eight angels for a gracious
8
:
1 Good accounts of Edwards have long been accessible, and Mrs C. C. Stopes has
published two notable articles on Hunnis. (See bibliography. )
? As to Damon and Pithias, cf. ante, vol. v, chap. IV, and, as to this play and Palamon
and Arcyte, chap. XI of the present volume. The university drama Narcissus mentioned
in the same chapter is, of course, a different play from that mentioned in the text.
## p. 287 (#305) ############################################
Children's Plays not written by Masters 287
reward by her Majesty's command. By whom that part was acted I know
not, unless by Peter Carew, the pretty boy before mentioned.
A scene in Narcissus may have been suggested by this play,
as the History of Loyaltie and Bewtie may, possibly, have been
suggested by Cornish’s Triumpe of Love and Bewte, of 1515.
The revels accounts for 1571–2 contain the following:
John Tryce for mony to him due for Leashes, & Doghookes, with staves, &
other necessaries: by him provyded for the hunters that made the crye after
the fox (let loose in the Coorte) with theier howndes, hornes, and hallowing,
in the playe of narcisses. which crye was made, of purpose even as the
woordes then in utteraunce, & the parte then played, did Requier. . . . John
Izarde for mony to him due for his device in counterfeting Thunder &
Lightning in the playe of Narcisses.
For reasons which will soon appear, it seems improbable that
Nathaniel Giles, the last of the masters with whom we are
concerned, composed any plays for production by the children.
But the répertoire of the boys was probably not confined, even
in the early years of their histrionic career, to the plays written
by their masters. Unfortunately, the early records are too scanty
and too indefinite to permit of very positive statements on this
point. As early, however, as 1584, two of the most distinguished
authors of the time had written for them. John Lyly's Campaspe
and Sapho and Phao were played before the queen by the children
of the chapel in conjunction with the children of Paul's before
this date, and another play by the same author, Love's Meta-
morphosis, originally written for the children of Paul's, was trans-
ferred to the chapel boys at some date before its publication in
1601. One of the most interesting of the plays of George Peele,
and, in the opinion of some critics, his best play, The Araygnement
of Paris, also bears upon the title-page of the first edition (1584) the
statement that it had been presented before the Queenes Majestie
by the Children of her Chappell. ' Fleay, indeed, assigns the pre-
sentation of it to 5 February 1581, and the same writer gives 1581
as the date for Campaspe and 1582 as the date for Sapho and
Phao. These dates seem probable; but we are not here concerned
with their accuracy, as the essential fact is that both Lyly and
Peele wrote for the children of the chapel. That Greene wrote
anything for them is unlikely, but the Tragedie of Dido Queene
of Carthage, by Marlowe and Nashe, is stated on the title-page to
have been played by them, and it is highly probable that it was
they who played Nashe's Pleasant Comedie, called Summers last
will and Testament at Croydon in September 1592. The play
alluded to here as having been presented by the same company
## p. 288 (#306) ############################################
288
The Chapel Royal
in the preceding summer was, according to one of Fleay's con-
jectures, Marlowe and Nashe's Dido; according to another, the
anonymous Warres of Cyrus, published in 1600; we have no
means of knowing whether it was either.
To one unfamiliar with the stage history of the time these
records might seem inadequate evidence for the brilliant and
influential histrionic career ascribed to the children of the chapel.
But those who know how scanty the records are will recognise
that no other company in these early years presents greater claims
to having exercised a real leadership in the drama. The children
of Paul's were, indeed, at one time served by Lyly as dramatist? ;
but he began with the children of the chapel, who seem, in fact,
to have been pioneers in many important features of both dramatic
and histrionic development. That there were other companies
of boys—notably those of Paul's and those of Windsor, those of
Westminster school and those of Merchant Taylors'—and that
many companies of men players performed at court and in public,
does not detract from their primacy in these early years.
The opinion expressed above that Nathaniel Giles, who, as will
be seen, became master in 1597, wrote nothing for the chapel boys
is a mere conjecture, but is supported by two facts: first, that
not long after he became master he seems to have allowed other
men to use his commission to procure boys for the chapel to
provide a company of professional child actors; and that, from
this time onward, the actual choir boys of the chapel do not seem
to have taken any part in the presentation of plays at court or in
public. Since the professional company was supplied with plays
by professional dramatists, and the boys under the immediate
personal care of Giles did not produce plays, it is very improbable
that he wrote any.
On 9 June 1597, Nathaniel Giles, bachelor of music and master
of the children of St George's chapel, Windsor, became master of
the children of the Chapel Royal, in succession to William Hunnis.
By a privy seal of 3 July, he was authorised to take up boys
for the service of the chapel. No essentially new provision
appears in this commission. Giles is authorised to take up'suche
1 That Lyly ever occupied the official position of vice-master (i. e. assistant master)
of Paul's, seems a solemn inference from a jesting satire. Harvey says he 'played
the Vicemaster of Poules and the Foolemaster of the Theater. ' Was there, then, s
Foolemaster of the Theater? That neither epithet need be taken seriously is indicated
by the additional.
sometime the fiddlesticke of Oxford, now the very bable of London. '
So far as we know, there was no such officer as vice-master of Paul's. Vice,' in
• Vicemaster,' is, doubtless, the counterpart of 'Foole,' in ‘Foolemaster. '
6
## p. 289 (#307) ############################################
Theatrical Company of Children of Chapel 289
a
and so many children as he or his sufficient Deputie shall thinke
meete,' and to provide 'sufficient lodging for him and the sayd
Children, when they for our service shall remove to any place or
places'; but the former clause is repeated from earlier commissions,
and the latter would never have seemed anything more than a
more explicit expression of a similar clause in previous com-
missions but for the events which ensued. At some unknown
date after the issue of this commission, James Robinson and Henry
Evans joined with Giles in exploiting the commission. They took
up more boys than were needed for the chapel choir, lodged them
in Blackfriars and established a regular theatrical company of the
children of the chapel.
The highest interest attaches to this professional company of
boy actors, but it is at present impossible to determine exactly
when their career began. The Blackfriars property was purchased
from Sir William More on 4 February 1596 by James Burbage,
apparently because of its suitability for a playhouse. In November
of the same year, the inhabitants of Blackfriars petitioned the
privy council against Burbage, declaring that he is now altering
it and meaneth very shortly to convert and turne the same into
a common playhouse. ' How effective this petition was in hindering
or delaying the projected playhouse we have no means of knowing
Burbage died early in the following year, and the next unmis-
takable evidence we have in regard to the Blackfriars playhouse
is that, on 2 September 1600, Richard Burbage, son of James,
leased it for twenty-one years to one Henry Evans; but it is
certain that, before this date, it had been used as a playhouse by
the children of the chapel, and that Evans was already interested
in the company. In testimony given in a lawsuit in 1612, Richard
Burbage says:
true yt is that this defendant, consideringe with himselfe that, except the said
Evans could erect and keepe a companye of Playinge boyes and others to
playe playes and interludes in the said Playhouse in such sort as before tyme
had bene there used, etc. ;
and Evans speaks of the playhouse as 'then or late in the tenure
or occupacion of this defendant' (i. e. Evans himself). It is com-
monly held that the children of the chapel were playing there as
early as the end of 1598, and this is probably true.
The evidence we have seems to indicate that Giles was only
6
6
1 The order for the suppression of the Blackfriars playhouse, dated 21 January
1619, states, however, that their honors then (i. e. in 1596) forbad the use of the said
house for playes. '
E. L VI. CH. XI.
19
## p. 290 (#308) ############################################
290
The Chapel Royal
passively interested in the project, and that someone else—perhaps
Henry Evans—first saw the great possibilities which lay in pro-
curing, under the liberal terms of Giles's commission, a company of
boy actors and exploiting them in the private playhouse of the
Blackfriars. After about a year and a half of experience, we may
suppose, Evans decided to take a long lease of the property, and
this was effected on 2 September 1600. It was not very long,
however, before he got into trouble about taking up boys. On an
ill-fated Saturday, 13 December 1600, James Robinson, acting as
deputy for Giles and as agent for Evans, seized Thomas Clifton,
a thirteen-year-old boy, as he was on his way to school. Unfor-
tunately, the boy's father, Henry Clifton, esquire, of Toft Trees,
Norfolk, not only secured the aid of Sir John Fortescue, one
of the privy council, to have his son released, but, about a year
later, brought the matter before the court of Star chamber. A
decree was rendered censuring Evans for taking up gentlemen's
sons and ordering the severance of his connection with the
company and playhouse. In anticipation, perhaps, of these pro-
ceedings, Evans, in October 1601, transferred all his property to
his son-in-law, Alexander Hawkins. After the decree was rendered,
Evans, acting through Hawkins, further entered into an agreement
with Edward Kirkham, William Rastall and Thomas Kendall, allowing
them to share in the management and profits of the playhouse. This
is not the place to recite the quarrels between these shareholders;
it may suffice to record that the success of the children was very
great, that the profits of the undertaking are said to have been very
large and that the company continued, with some vicissitudes, to
act as the children of the chapel until, at the accession of James,
they were re-named the children of the queen’s revels, and, finally,
were replaced by the company of men to which Shakespeare
belonged.
During these years, this professional troupe of boys was
served by some of the foremost dramatists of their time.
Among the earliest was, doubtless, Chapman, who, perhaps, joined
them in 1598, when he left the employ of Henslowe. He appears
to have written for them his May-Day, his Sir Gyles Goosecappe,
his Gentleman Usher and the extant version of Al Fooles. Another
even more notable writer for their stage was Ben Jonson, from
whom they received not only The Case is Altered, but, also, Cynthia's
Revels, Poetaster and, perhaps, A Tale of a Tub. There is also
some reason to believe that some of Marston's plays were written
for them. Unfortunately, much of the stage history of the time is
## p. 291 (#309) ############################################
Ages of the Children. Songs and Music 291
purely conjectural, but it seems practically certain that their vogue
had become so great by 1601–2 as to draw from Shakespeare the
airily satirical lines in Hamlet concerning the 'eyrie of children,
little eyases, that cry out on the top of question and are most
tyranically clapped for it. '
The names of some of these boy actors of this later period are
known, some from Henry Clifton's bill of complaint and some from
the lists in Ben Jonson's plays. One of them, Salathiel Pavy, as is
well known, died early, and was celebrated by Jonson in a graceful,
if somewhat 'conceited,' epitaph, full of the highest praise for his
abilities as an actor. Others became renowned as members of the
king's company in later years.
As to the ages of the boys, it is difficult to speak with
certainty. Young Clifton was thirteen years old when 'taken
up,' and William Hunnis found it necessary, in earlier times (1583),
'to kepe bothe a man servant to attend upon them and lykewyse a
woman servant to wash and kepe them cleane. ' In the case of the
boys of the choir, it was customary, from early times, for the sovereign
to provide for their education at one of the universities so soon as
their 'breasts (i. e. voices) changed'; but, no doubt, when their prin-
cipal function was acting they were held longer as children of the
chapel, and Philip Gawdy writes in 1601: "'Tis sayde my Lady of
Leoven bath marryed one of the playing boyes of the chappell. '
The success of the companies of choir boys in both early and
later times was, doubtless, due, in no small degree, to the songs
scattered through their plays and the instrumental music before
the play began and between the acts. Other companies, of course,
had incidental songs, but, apparently, not so many of them, and
instrumental music seems not to have been given in the public
theatres. That it was a prominent feature of the performances
given by the boys, notwithstanding Clifton's declaration that his
son and other boys taken up by Robinson, Evans and Giles were
childeren noe way able or fitt for singing, nor by anie of the sayd
confederates endevoured to be taught to sing,' we know from pas-
sages in several contemporary plays, as well as from the explicit
statements of the duke of Stettin, who visited Blackfriars on
18 September 1602.
The special interest felt by queen Elizabeth in the chapel
boys at Blackfriars may have been due, in part, at least, to their
music. At any rate, there cannot be any doubt of her interest in
them. According to a letter from Sir Dudley Carleton to John
Chamberlain, she attended the play at Blackfriars on Tuesday,
6
194%
## p. 292 (#310) ############################################
292
The Chapel Royal
She was
29 December 1601. The duke of Stettin speaks, indeed, as if the
,
queen had established the theatre and provided the rich costumes
of the plays, but the evidence in the suit of Kirkham vs Evans et
als (1612) indicates that the managers, Evans, Kirkham and their
fellows, bore all expenses and took all profits. Kirkham was,
indeed, yeoman of the revels, and had charge of the costumes
and properties provided for the revels at court, but, though he
may have been able to borrow from the revels garments for the
use of his company, he could not have bought them without special
authorisation. There is no evidence that the queen had any
active part in the establishment or maintenance of the children of
Blackfriars, though, of course, the company could not have been
established or maintained without her tacit consent.
fond of the drama and of music. On 8 April 1600, the privy
council addressed a letter to the Middlesex justices expressing
the queen's pleasure in the performances of Edward Alleyn and
his company, and her desire that he should be allowed to erect the
Fortune theatre.
Hasty as this survey of the long and brilliant career of the
children of the chapel has, necessarily, been, it can hardly fail to
have suggested their very great importance in the history of the
drama and the stage. They were pioneers in more than one
interesting movement, they produced plays by some of the fore-
most dramatists of their time, they were prominent in the curious,
not to say ludicrous, 'war of the theatres,' and they were finally
put down because of the vigorous political satire spoken through
their mouths.
1
## p. 293 (#311) ############################################
CHAPTER XII
UNIVERSITY PLAYS
TUDOR AND EARLY STEWART PERIODS
It has been pointed out earlier in this work that, while the
humanist movement at Oxford and Cambridge in the sixteenth
century did not result in any important contributions to classical
scholarship, it was remarkable for the production of a large
number of Latin plays? In the previous volume? , the rise of the
renascence academic drama on the continent was briefly traced,
and its influence on early Tudor comedy, especially school plays,
illustrated. But, in England, school plays had a comparatively
limited vogue. It was at the universities that the humanist drama,
written and acted by scholars, found its real home. Originating
in didactic tendencies, and encouraged, as has been shown, by the
framers of college statutes, its aims, at first, were educational rather
than literary or recreative. But, amidst the medley of plastic in-
fluences in English university life, it was inevitable that drama at
Oxford and Cambridge should not remain purely academic, in the
narrower pedagogic sense. The gradually increasing proportion of
plays in the vernacular produced on college stages, the ceremonial
visits of kings and queens and other royal personages to 'shows'
at the two seats of learning, the attractions, for the scholar play-
wrights and their audiences, of controversies, whether local and
personal or of national significance—these were among the factors
which speedily enlarged the bounds of university drama, and
developed within it that variety of types which the following pages
will attempt to sketch. But, to the last, it remained conscious, at
least intermittently, of its distinctive origin and mission. Though
influencing the popular stage, and being influenced by it in turn,
yet, in the main, it followed an independent and diverging track,
and it has both merits and limitations which are peculiarly its own.
i See vol. II, p. 424. See vol. v, chap. v, pp. 100 ff. 3 See ibid. p. 103.
## p. 294 (#312) ############################################
294
University Plays
5
Mummery and impersonation in their more primitive forms can
be traced back at the universities to the later fourteenth century.
Though Warton's reference to the fragment of an ancient ac-
compt-roll of the dissolved college of Michael-House in Cambridge'
(it was merged in Trinity college) containing expenditure, under
1386, on a comedia, cannot now be verified, it may reasonably be
taken as authentic. The statutes of New college, Oxford (1400)
and of King's college, Cambridge (1443) expressly provide for the
celebration of the favourite medieval ceremony of the boy bishop'
on the feast of the Innocents and of St Nicholas's day respectively.
In the King's college account-books there is an entry of expenses
incurred circa ludos on Christmas day, 1582, and of a payment
lusoribus in aula collegii, on the following day. Similar entries of
expenditure on Christmas ludi or 'disgysynges' are found in 1489,
1496, and later? The account-books of Magdalen college, Oxford,
show that provision was made for 'the bishop' on St Nicholas's
day frequently between 1482 and 1530, as well as for scriptural
ludi on the chief church festivals, and miscellaneous interludes
and entertainments. The register of Merton college, Oxford,
records the election of another mock dignitary, Rex Fabarum
or king of beans, who was chosen on or about the eve of St Edmund
(19 November). In the first entry, in 1485, the election is said
to be per antiquam consuetudinem, and the names of successive
'kings' are given annually till 1539, when the ceremony seems
to have fallen into disuse?
It was while such medieval plays and ceremonies retained
a flickering vitality that humanist drama at the universities began.
At Oxford, the mention in the Magdalen accounts for the first time
of a comedia in 1535, and, again, in 1539, and of a tragedia in 1540,
probably indicates the transition to neo-classic types. According
to Anthony à Wood, the Magdalen comedy of 1535 was Piscator
or The Fisher Caught, by John Hoker, a fellow of the society. In
1536, the Plutus of Aristophanes was acted in Greek at St John's
college, Cambridge. The production in 1546 of the Athenian play-
wright's Eiphvn or Pax, by John Dee the astrologer, at Trinity
college, Cambridge, of which he was a fellow, seems, also, to have
been in the original tongue. But these precedents were not
6
See Plays performed in Cambridge Colleges before 1585 by Smith, G. C. Moore in
Fasciculus Joanni Willis Clark dicatus, p. 267.
· The register is in MS, but the present writer has been given facilities for
consulting it.
## p. 295 (#313) ############################################
Nicholas Grimald
295
followed, and there appears to be no record of a classical tragedy
being acted in Greek on the Tudor university stage'.
Seneca, not Sophocles, was the pattern of the English humanist
when he essayed to write tragedy? It is thus typical of the
blending of old and new influences that the earliest extant uni-
versity plays should be on scriptural subjects, and should be cast
in approximately Senecan mould. Their author was Nicholas
Grimald, born in 1519, and a member, successively, of Christ's
college, Cambridge, and of Brasenose, Merton and Christ Church,
Oxford
The first of these plays, Christus Redivivus, printed at Cologne
in 1543, was written and acted at Brasenose, as Grimald relates in
a dedicatory epistle, soon after his migration to Oxford in 1540.
It combines a Senecan treatment of the Gospel story of the
resurrection, in which Mary Magdalene plays the most effective
part, with a comic underplot centring in the four Roman
soldiers who guard the sepulchre, and who are cleverly dis-
criminated types of the military braggart. Grimald's second
tragedy, Archipropheta, printed at Cologne in 1548, was written
in 1547, on his election to the newly constituted society of Christ
Church. It dealt with the career of John the Baptist, which
Buchanan had already dramatised in his Baptistes, acted at
Bordeaux a few years previously*.
But, in spirit and in style, the two plays are remarkably
different from each other. The Scottish humanist follows the
strict Senecan model, and makes the Baptist the mouthpiece of
his own political and religious opinions. In Grimald's work, John
plays a comparatively passive part. The interest centres in the
voluptuous passion of Herod and his unlawful wife Herodias,
which is portrayed with a lyrical intensity and opulence of phrase
unmatched in Tudor drama till the time of Marlowe. Equally
foreign to the scriptural theme and to the Senecan convention is
the comic note struck by Herod's fool, Gelasimus.
These two Latin tragedies of Grimald, if they were known to
Roger Ascham, did not earn from him in The Scholemaster the
1 John Cristopherson, according to Warton, exhibited in 1546 at Trinity college,
of which he was afterwards master, a Jephtha of his own composition in Greek and in
Latin. The MS of the Greek play is in the library of Trinity college.
Smith, G. C. Moore, u. s. , pp. 269–270, mentions performances at Cambridge
of Troas, 1551/2 and 1560/1, Oedipus and Hecuba, 1559/60, and Medea, 1560/1 and
1563. These were almost certainly Seneca's plays (Troas = Troades).
3 On Grimald's English poems, see vol. 11 of the present work, pp. 179, 180.
* See vol. in of the present work, p. 161.
## p. 296 (#314) ############################################
296
University Plays
commendation of being ‘able to abyde the free touch of Aris-
totles preceptes and Euripides examples' which he reserved for
Buchanan's Jephthes and the Absalom of Thomas Watson of St
John's, Cambridge. Watson, owing to scruples on a minor metrical
point, never published the play; but it is probably that preserved
in the Stowe MSS 957, which is a tragedy of the strict Senecan
type. The story of the revolt in the royal house of Israel lent
itself as naturally to Senecan machinery as did legendary dynastic
feuds of early British kings, and Chusi's relation to David, in act
iv, of the overthrow of Absalom's ill-armed troops and of his
hapless end, is a vivid piece of narrative.
Religious drama of an entirely different type made its appear-
ance on the Cambridge stage when, during the Lent of 1545,
Kirchmayer's Pammachius was acted at Christ's college. Though
it was condensed for the occasion, no excisions could disguise
its savage anti-papal satire. It was inevitable that the orthodox
chancellor of the university, Gardiner, bishop of Winchester,
should write letters of remonstrance to the vice-chancellor, and
order him to hold an enquiry concerning the performance. Dis-
satisfied with the report, Gardiner laid the matter before the privy
council, which instructed the vice-chancellor to reprove the
offenders, but took no further disciplinary measures. The members
of Christ's college probably avoided controversial dramas in
future ; but entries in the college accounts testify to great dramatic
activity in the immediately following years. The leading spirit
in these entertainments was William Stevenson, who entered
Christ's in 1546, graduated B. A. in 1550, M. A. in 1553 and B. D. in
1560, and was twice elected a fellow of the college. A play by him
is mentioned in the accounts for 1550—1, and, again, in those for
1551—2; and, in the following year, he is reimbursed 18d. for ex-
penses on his 'plaies. ' There is another entry of a play by him in
1553—4, and a final one in 1559—60, during the second tenure of his
fellowship. Hence, it has been plausibly conjectured that Steven-
son is the author of Gammer Gurtons Nedle, 'played on stage,
not longe ago in Christes Colledge in Cambridge. Made by
Mr S. Mr of Art. '
The first edition of this comedy was not published till 1575, but
its printer Colwell had obtained, in 1562/3, a licence to issue
Dyccon of Bedlam. As ‘Diccon the Bedlem' is the leading figure in
1 The traditional ascription of the play to John Still rests merely upon a conjecture
of Isaac Reed in 1782, and may be dismissed. But it is remarkable that John Bridges,
dean of Salisbury, a member of Pembroke college, is spoken of in two of the Martin
Marprelate tracts, 1588, as the reputed author of the comedy.
## p. 297 (#315) ############################################
Gammer Gurtons Nedle
297
'Mr S. 's' play, the licence probably refers to it, and there are
bibliographical grounds for the conjecture that the work was
printed long before it was put on sale. A reference to arrest ‘in
the kings name' in act v suggests that the comedy was written
before the death of Edward VI in July 1553. If Stevenson were
its author, it would thus appear to have been composed between
1550 and 1553, and, if the title-page is to be trusted, revived later,
probably in 1559—60. However this may be, Gammer Gurtons
Nedle is of enduring interest as the earliest university play in
English which has come down to us. At first sight, it shows little
trace of scholarly influences. The fourteener' in which it is
'
mainly written is a rough and tumble metre; and the dialogue,
;
often coarse in strain, is, as a rule, in that south-western dialect
which became the conventional form of rustic speech on the
Elizabethan stage. The plot turns on the complications produced
in a small village society by the loss of the gammer's needle, and
the characters are typically English, including Diccon, who com-
bines the rôles of a Vice and a vagrant Tom of Bedlam. But, on
closer examination, the effect of classical models is seen. The
comedy is divided into acts and scenes, and the plot has a real
organic unity. The parts played by the different personages in the
village community, from “Master Baily' and the curate downward,
are neatly discriminated. The triumph of pastoral convention
had not yet blurred for English humanists the outlines of genuine
English country life.
The golden period of academic drama may be dated from the
visits paid by queen Elizabeth to the two universities early in her
reign. The visit to Cambridge began on 5 August 1564, and, in
a letter from Grindal, bishop of London, written about three
weeks before, the university authorities were admonished to
put themselves in all readinesse to please her Majestie, to welcome her with
all manner of scholastical exercises, viz. with Sermons, both in English and
Latin; Disputations in all kinds of Faculties; and playing of Comedies and
Tragedies; Oratios and Verses, both in Latin and Greek.
Under the direction of Roger Kelke, 'who was by the Vice-
Chancellor and Heads of Colleges specially appointed to set forth
and teach such plays as could be exhibited before her Grace,' a
varied dramatic programme was provided. It began with a per-
formance of the Auularia of Plautus? on the evening of Sunday,
* Plautus appears to have been the favourite classical dramatist at Cambridge in
the sixteenth century. Smith, G. C. Moore, U. 8. , pp. 269–271, records sixteen per-
formances of his plays between 1549 and 1583; four performances of comedies by
Terence are noted during the same period.
6
## p. 298 (#316) ############################################
298
University Plays
6 August, in King's college chapel. A great stage containing the
breadth of the Church from the one side to the other' was erected
for the performance at the queen's own cost, and so keen was her
interest that she remained till the final plaudite, without betraying
the slightest weariness, though some of her suite grew impatient,
owing to their ignorance of Latin or their desire for sleep.
On the following evening, a tragedy called Dido, written by
Edward Halliwell, fellow of King's college, was performed. It was
in hexameter verse, and drawn, for the most part, from the Aeneid.
Like the earlier school drama on the same subject, acted before
Wolsey in 1532", it is not extant; but the contemporary narrative
of Nicholas Robinson describes it as novum opus sed venustum et
elegans, though considered too long by some carping spectators.
A still more regrettable loss is that of the next evening's
play, Ezechias, an English Biblical drama by Nicholas Udalla.
As Udall was an Oxford man, and had been dead for about seven
years, the production of a play by him on this occasion is somewhat
remarkable, and was probably due to his long connection with
court entertainments. Though the work is not extant, the accounts
of the performance by Hartwell and Robinson show that it dealt
with Hezekiah's destruction of the idols of the grove and the
brazen serpent, the resentment of the populace, the mission of
Rabshakeh at the head of the Assyrian host and the mysterious
destruction of the invaders in a single night. As in the case of
miracle-plays, lighter episodes were evidently mingled with
Biblical incidents. Mirum vero quantum hic facetiarum, quantum
leporis in re tam seria ac sancta, et veritatis tamen certa serie
nunquam interrupta.
Great 'preparations and charges' had been 'employed and
spent about' another play, Ajax Flagellifer, a Latin version of the
Sophoclean tragedy, which was to be given on 9 August, the eve of
the queen's departure. But she was so much wearied by her
exertions that the performance had to be abandoned Before her
departure on the following morning, Elizabeth gave a present in
money and other marks of her favour to Thomas Preston, fellow
of King's, afterwards author of Cambises, king of Persia, who
had pleased her by his acting in Dido and his skill in disputation.
This visit of the queen to Cambridge had its counterpart two
* See ante, vol. v, chap. v, p. 102.
: On Udall'8 other plays, see ante, vol. v, chap. v, pp.
was a sidesman of the parish of St Mary's, Aldermanbury, in
1606: his respectability is unimpeachable. But the besetting sins
of the player-luxury, extravagance and intemperate living—for
which Hazlitt found generous excuses in later years, seem to
have existed then as ever. We read much of the player's love
of fine clothes and display. And there can be no doubt that the
frequent interruptions caused by the plague, the deterrent action
of such managers as Henslowe and the notorious uncertainty of
theatrical affairs, resulted in much poverty and distress among
lesser actors and lesser companies. Those on tour, especially,
suffered hardships, being forced to pawn their wardrobe, to 'pad
the hoof' instead of riding from town to town and to beg, instead
of play, for their keep. The extremes of the profession were as
far apart then as now; but the age of Elizabeth and James un-
doubtedly raised it as a whole into respect as well as popularity;
and the outspoken envy of those—by no means all of puritanical
bent—who railed at the pride and display of actors was the natural
result of the advance which the period witnessed. During the
reign of Charles, the greater prevalence of the plague, the shadow
of coming troubles and the deterioration of the drama itself caused
something of a decline, and the rebellion brought all to a close.
1 Wallace, u. s. , calculates Shakespeare's yearly profits from the Globe as never
exceeding £300, and a similar amount from the Blackfriars.
1
1
## p. 279 (#297) ############################################
CHAPTER XI
THE CHILDREN OF THE CHAPEL ROYAL
AND THEIR MASTERS
THE Chapel Royal and its relations to the history of drama
in England form an extremely puzzling and interesting subject
of enquiry. The origin of the chapel is lost in unrecorded
antiquity, the date of its earliest histrionic efforts is uncertain
and the records of its later activity are woefully incomplete. But
it entered the histrionic field early; it was, if we may trust the
extant records, a pioneer in the production of some important
kinds of plays; some of its authors seem to have set fashions
in dramatic composition; and Shakespeare himself honoured its
rivalry with one of the few clear notices of things contemporary
that we have from his pen.
Of the membership and organisation of the chapel in the
earliest times, we have not any systematic account; but, under
Edward IV, according to Liber Niger Domus Regis, it consisted
of a dean, twenty-four chaplains, two yeomen, eight children,
a master of song and a master of the grammar school. Later,
a sub-dean was added, the number of boys was increased to
twelve, and there were various increases in the number of chaplains,
or gentlemen of the chapel, to say nothing of the long list of
probationers awaiting vacancies among the gentlemen; but these
changes affected the size and not the functions of the institution.
It has always been an organisation primarily for the celebration
of divine service in the royal household, and its functions in its
earliest years, as during the last three centuries, were, perhaps,
limited strictly to this primary purpose.
But under the Tudor sovereigns, if not earlier, notable unofficial
additions were made to its functions. Both the gentlemen and
the children took part, frequently if not regularly, in the pageants,
masques and plays produced at Christmas and on other festal
## p. 280 (#298) ############################################
280
The Chapel Royal
occasions. During the reigns of Henry VII and Henry VIII, the
gentlemen seem to have figured in pageants and plays nearly as
often as the children; but their histrionic career seems to have
ceased early, perhaps because even then such frivolous perform-
ances seemed inappropriate to gentlemen ‘endowed,' as Liber
Niger specifies, 'with virtues morolle and specikative, as of the
musicke, shewinge in descante, eloquent in readinge, suffytyente
in organes playinge. ' It is very probable, indeed, that the histrionic
activity of the gentlemen began with morality plays and pageants
presenting moral allegories, and ceased soon after the drama and
other amusements of the court took a more secular turn. The
histrionic career of the children-possibly because they were
children—continued longer. In 1569, to be sure, they were
attacked in a pamphlet entitled The Children of the Chapel Stript
and Whipt:
Even in her majesties chappel do these pretty upstart youthes profane the
Lordes Day by the lascivious writhing of their tender limbs, and gorgeous
decking of their apparell, in feigning bawdie fables gathered from the
idolatrous heathen poets;
but it was not until the following century that the children ceased
to act. It is with the children, therefore, rather than the gentlemen,
that we are here concerned.
The earliest record relating to the children and their master1
that has been found is the commission (12 July 1440)
to the king's clerk, Master John Croucher, dean of the Chapel within the
king's household, to take throughout England such and so many boys as he or
his deputies shall see to be fit and able to serve God and the King in the said
Royal Chapel
We have here no mention of anyone specially delegated for the
training and supervision of the boys, and it is possible, though
6
1 In his introduction to The Old Cheque Book of the Chapel Royal, Rimbault
says : The earliest facts on record relating to the “King's Chapel" are contained in
the Liber Niger Domus Regis, a man
:
anuscript of the time of Edward IV'; and this
statement has been taken by later writers to mean that we have no earlier notice of
the organisation. There exists, however, in the Patent Rolls, a long series of earlier
notices, beginning with the mention of "Thomas de Lynton, Dean of the Chapel of the
King's Household,' 20 August 1380. Among the most important of these are: the
notice of John Boor as dean in 1389; the acquittance (10 March 1403) “to Richard
Kyngeston, late dean of the King's Chapel within the household, who received divers
jewels, vestments, . . . , for the same from John Boor, late Dean of the Chapel of
Richard II by indenture, and has delivered them to Richard Prentys, now dean. . . ';
various licences to Prentys in 1406 and 1412; and the commission, 20 November
1433, to distribute among the clerks who had been in the chapel of Henry V the sum
of £200, bequeathed to them in his will.
## p. 281 (#299) ############################################
Series of Masters
281
unlikely, that there was no such officer, and that there had been
no children in the chapel choir before this time, or, at least, no
special official recognition of them. These suppositions, however,
may be thought to derive a certain support from the next two
entries : 4 November 1444, a
grant to John Plummer, one of the clerks of the King's Chapel, for the
exhibition of eight boys of the Chapel and for his reward, of 40 marks yearly,
from Michaelmas last, so long as he have the keeping of the said boys or
others in their place, from the ulnage of woollen cloth for sale and from a
moiety of the forfeiture thereof in the town and suburbs of Bristol;
24 February 1445, a
grant, during good behaviour, to the king's serjeant John Plummer, one of
the clerks of the Chapel, for his daily labours in the teaching and rule of the
king's boys of the Chapel, of the said teaching, rule and governance.
This grant was surrendered 30 May 1446 for another of the same
tenor. In any event, the first master of the children was not,
as is commonly supposed, Henry Abyndon, for he was certainly
preceded by John Plummer.
From 1465, the series of masters can be made out with tolerable
completeness and certainty. On 2 July 1465, there was a
grant to the king's servitor Henry Abyndon of 40 marks yearly from Michael-
mas last from the issues of the county of Wilts for the provision of clothing
and other necessary apparel of the boys of the Chapel of the king's household
and for their instruction and governance, so long as he shall have the said
provision, instruction and governance;
and this grant was renewed 14 February 1471. It is not yet
ascertained when Henry Abyndon (or Abingdon) ceased to be
master; but, on 6 February 1479, a
grant was made to Gilbert Banaster of 40 marks yearly from the petty custom
in the port of London and ports and places adjacent for the maintenance,
instruction and governance of the boys of the Chapel of the household from
Michaelmas last, on which day he undertook these, so long as he shall have
the same.
When Banaster's successor was appointed does not appear; but
this successor was almost certainly not William Cornish, as is
commonly supposed. Cornish, as we shall see, was the successor
of William Newark! Newark was granted a corrody from the
priory of St Mary, Thetford, at some date prior to 23 November
* It is, of course, very unlikely that Cornish preceded Newark, was replaced by
him and then succeeded him. That Cornish was master in 1493 seems to be one of
Collier's unjustified inferences.
## p. 282 (#300) ############################################
282
The Chapel Royal
>
1480; nevertheless, in the document of this date he is not called
master of the children but one of the gentlemen of the King's
Chapel,' and in the grant (6 April 1485) of a yearly rent of £20 from
the king's manor of Bletchingley, county Surrey, he is spoken of
only as 'the King's servant. ' It is, however, clear that he was the
predecessor of Cornish as master of the children. On 23 May 1509,
he was appointed 'gentleman of the Chapel in the royal household
and master of the boys of the Chapel, during pleasure. ' As this
was scarcely more than a month after the king's accession, and as
he was already a gentleman of the chapel in 1480, the appoint-
ment, doubtless, was only a renewal of one made in the pre-
ceding reign. On 12 November 1509, he is mentioned as lately
deceased; but the appointment of his successor seems, for some
reason, to have been delayed for several years, for among the ‘Fees
and Annuities Paid by the King in 1516' occurs a record of
£26. 138. 4d. to 'W. Cornyshe, Master of the Children of the
Chapel, Vice W. Newark, during pleasure,' and it seems improbable
that Newark would have been mentioned if any master had come
between him and Cornish, or if Cornish had held the appointment
since Newark's death? Cornish is mentioned as late deceased on
? .
7 November 1524, and he seems to have been succeeded, though
not immediately, by William Crane, who had long been one of the
gentlemen of the chapel. Crane's appointment as master of the
children is dated 12 May 1526. His immediate successor was
Richard Bower. The official appointment was made 31 October
1545, but it was to date from 30 June 1545, since which time he
has by the king's command exercised the office. ' Whether Crane
was then dead or not, is not certain. In the 'Augmentations,'
a William Crane, apparently the person here in question, is
recorded as receiving his annuity on 8 May and 16 October 1545,
and there is a later record of payment of an annuity out of St Ed-
mondesburye to a William Crane in 1546. It seems, however, prob-
a
able that there were two William Cranes, whose names appear in the
records of these years, as there seems also to have been a Richard
Bowyer (alias Styrley, or Strylly, or Strelley) who has sometimes
been confused with Richard Bower, gentleman of the chapel and
master of the children. According to the entry in The Old Cheque
Book of the Chapel Royal, Bower died 26 July 1563; but Stow
a
1 Of Clement Adams, who is said (Babees Boke, p. lxxvi) to have been master of
the children in 1516, no such record can be found. John Melyonek and Philip Van
Wilder are also sometimes given as masters, in 1484 and 1550 respectively; but they
were merely commissioned to take up singers for the chapel.
## p. 283 (#301) ############################################
Dramatic Work of the Earlier Masters 283
gives 1561 as the year, and this seems supported by the fact that,
on 4 December 1561, a commission to take up children for the
chapel was issued to Richard Edwards, who is expressly called
master of the children. Edwards, perhaps the most famous of the
masters, did not long enjoy his office, as he died 31 October 1566.
He was succeeded by William Hunnis (erroneously called Thomas
and John in contemporary documents), who served until his death,
6 June 1597. With Nathaniel Giles, who was appointed master
three days later, our interest in the masters of the children ceases,
for he was the last under whom the boys were permitted to act.
Not only did the boys who acted cease, at the accession of James,
to be called children of the chapel and become children of the
queen's revels; but, when in 1626, Giles was commissioned to take
up boys for the king's chapel, it was expressly provided
that none of the said Choristers or Children of the Chappell, soe to be taken
by force of this commission, shal be used or imployed as Comedians, or Stage
Players, . . . for that it is not fitt or desent that such as should sing the praises
of God Almighty should be trained or imployed in such lascivious and
prophane exercises.
The importance of the children of the chapel in dramatic
history is due, in part, to their histrionic success and, in part, to the
success of some of their masters, and other authors who wrote for
them, in dramatic composition. Of the work of the earlier masters,
we, of course, know very little. Gilbert Banaster is commonly
credited with dramatic composition on the basis of Warton's
remark that he wrote in English verse the Miracle of saint
Thomas, in the year 1467’; but a miracle is not necessarily a
miracle-play. William Cornish seems, however, from the entries
in the 'Household Book of Henry VIII,' to have composed some
of the plays produced by the boys under his direction. If the
story of Troylous and Pandor,' performed by him and the children
before the king at Eltham, Christmas 1515, was written by him, he
may be regarded as the earliest known dramatiser of romantic
fiction. Ward suggests that this may have been merely a pageant;
but there is no evidence that it was customary to use similar
stories as the subjects of pageants, though, undoubtedly, as the
list of costumes and the number of actors—fifteen-indicate, this
play was highly spectacular. But pageants usually bore such
titles as 'the Golldyn Arber in the Arche yerd of Plesyer'
(13 February 1511), ‘Dangerus Fortrees' (9 March 1511), or the
Pavyllyon un [on] the Plas Parlos' (6 January 1515), and the
'accounts' usually contain elaborate descriptions of the pageant
6
6
## p. 284 (#302) ############################################
284
The Chapel Royal
features. Moreover, it should be remembered that, not long after
this, plays on similar subjects were not uncommon, though, unfor-
tunately, only one of them has been preserved to us. It seems,
therefore, only fair to ascribe more importance to this record than
has usually been done, and to regard Cornish as a pioneer in the
production, if not in the composition, of romantic drama. The
interlude called 'the triumpe of Love and Bewte,' 'wryten and
presentyd by Mayster Cornyshe and oothers of the Chappell . . .
and the chyldern of the sayd Chapell, Christmas 1514, was of a
more conventional character, and can hardly have been more than
an allegorical pageant, with words and music. It should, perhaps,
be mentioned that Cornish had the devising of the pageants on
Sunday night at the Field of the Cloth of Gold.
Whether William Crane was an author is unknown. He was
certainly a man of much business; in 1523, letters of protection
were granted him as gentleman of the king's household, alias
gentleman of the chapel, alias comptroller of the petty custom of
the port of London, alias, of London, draper; and, at various times,
he was granted permission to import woad and wine and to export
double beer, and he was appointed to furnish five of the king's
ships. He seems to have been a favourite of the king, and received
many grants in addition to his salary and allowances.
Richard Bower's claim to rank as a dramatic author depends,
so far as we know, upon his identification with the ‘R. B. ' who
wrote Apius and Virginia'. This, though by no means certain,
seems highly probable. We have no earlier copy of the play than
that printed in 1575; but it was entered in the Stationers' register
in 1567/8, and seems, from the allusion to the sweating sickness,
to have been written not later than 1551, the last year, according to
Creighton, of the occurrence of this epidemic in England. Whether
written by Bower or not, the play obviously belongs to a group of
plays which show certain similarities in motives and technique.
The group includes, besides this play, Edwards’s Damon and
Pithias (and, probably, also his lost Palamon and Arcyte), Ful-
well's Like wil to like, Pikeryng's Horestes, Wapull's The Tyde
taryeth no Man, Preston's Cambises, the anonymous Common
Conditions, and Syr Clyomon and Syr Clamydes and, perhaps,
some others. One has only to read these plays in succession to be
struck with their mutual resemblances. Most notable, perhaps, are
the large amount of attention given in them to “stage business'and
the provision of action; the use, in several of them, of unrelated
1 As to this play, cf. ante, vol. V, chap. IV, pp. 63-65.
## p. 285 (#303) ############################################
Preston's Cambises
285
comic scenes for the same purpose; the similarity of the rustic
characters which appear in most of them; the use, in most of
them, of a Vice who plays with both hands,' inciting to evil or
folly and then aiding in its punishment; the curious warnings to
the audience to beware of 'Cosin Cutpurse'; and the no less
curious allusions to the 'trump of fame. These characteristics
are less marked in the work of Edwards than in the other plays;
but this may be due to his greater independence and originality.
The group would seem to have originated with Apius and Virginia.
If this be the case, we may attribute the existence of the group
to the prestige of the children of the chapel and their masters.
In regard to one of these plays, a word may be permitted,
although it does not strictly belong to this chapter. We
know from the title-page of Cambises, that it was written by
Thomas Preston, and it is universally assumed that this was the
Thomas Preston who gained the favour of Elizabeth on her visit
to Cambridge in 1564. Commentators on A Midsummer Night's
Dream have not only recognised that Shakespeare ridiculed this
play, but have also seen in the lamentations of Flute over Bottom's
loss of sixpence a day for life an allusion to the pension given by
the queen to Preston on her memorable visit. The fact need not
be insisted upon that sixpence a day is a different thing from the
£20 a year granted to Preston ? , but it seems not amiss to point
out that Preston's two Latin orations were the prime basis of the
queen's pension and choice of him as her scholar. Nor does it
seem very probable that the distinguished scholar, who was fellow
of King's college in 1556, B. A. in 1557, M. A. in 1561 (and incor-
porated M. A. at Oxford in 1566) and proctor of his college in 1565,
who was directed by the authorities in 1572 to study civil law and,
four years later, to proceed to the degree of LL. D. and who
became master of Trinity hall in 1584, should have published, in
1569 and 1570, Cambises and the two ballads entitled :
A geleflower gentle or swete mary golde
Where in the frutes of terannye you may beholde
and
A Lamentation from Rome how the Pope doth bewayle
The Rebelles in England cannot prevayle.
Surely the Preston of Cambridge would not have published these
things; or, if he had, neither he nor his publishers would have
failed to print his academic titles.
As to Cambises, see ante, vol. v, chap. iv, pp. 63–65.
? It is, perhaps, more to the point to observe that 6d. a day was exactly the wages of
the yeoman of the queen’s revels, while the master received only £10 a year.
## p. 286 (#304) ############################################
286
The Chapel Royal
So much is known of Richard Edwards and William Hunnis
that only the briefest notice of them can be given in the space
available here? It may suffice to say that Edwards was a university
man (as Richard Bower may also have been) and Hunnis obtained,
in some way, the equivalent of a university training. Both were
celebrated by contemporary writers as authors of dramatic and
of non-dramatic works, the fame of Edwards lasting till 1598,
though his death occurred in 1566. Non-dramatic writings from
the pens of both have been preserved; of their dramatic com-
positions, we have only Edwards’s Damon and Pithias, though
chance has preserved for us a very detailed account of his other
known play, Palamon and Arcyte, produced at Oxford in 15662.
Mrs Stopes has suggested that Hunnis was the author of the
Tragedie of the King of Scots, produced by the children in 1567,
the first recorded performance after his succession to the master-
ship, and of several others of the plays produced under his super-
vision. Among these were Narcissus, 1571, the History of
Loyaltie and Bewtie, 1579, the History of Alucius, 1579, and
a satirical Comedie or Morrall devised on A game of the Cardes,
1582. Probable as the suggestion is, we have no means of veri-
fying it. But the accounts of Edwards's Palamon and Hunnis's
Narcissus indicate that, as stage managers, they carried on the
traditions of the group of plays discussed above. The two passages
are so interesting in themselves and so important in their bearing
upon the history of the stage that they may be quoted briefly :
In the said play [Palamon and Arcyte) was acted a cry of hounds in the
Quadrant, upon the train of a fox in the hunting of Theseus, with which the
young scholars, who stood in the windows, were so much taken (supposing it
was real), that they cried out, 'Now, now ! -there, there! -he's caught, he's
caught! ' All which the Queen merrily beholding, said, “O, excellent! these
boys, in very troth, are ready to leap out of the windows, to follow the hounds. '
This part, it seems, being repeated before certain courtiers, in the lodgings of
Mr Robert Marbeck, one of the Canons of Christ Church, by the players in
their gowns (for they were all Scholars that acted) before the Queen came to
Oxford, was by them so well liked, that they said it far surpassed Damon and
Pithias, than which they thought nothing could be better. Likewise some
said, that if the author did any more before his death, he would run mad: but
this comedy was the last he made; for he died a few months after. In the
acting of the said play, there was a good part performed by the lady Amelia,
who, for gathering her flowers prettily in a garden then represented, and
singing sweetly in the time of March, received eight angels for a gracious
8
:
1 Good accounts of Edwards have long been accessible, and Mrs C. C. Stopes has
published two notable articles on Hunnis. (See bibliography. )
? As to Damon and Pithias, cf. ante, vol. v, chap. IV, and, as to this play and Palamon
and Arcyte, chap. XI of the present volume. The university drama Narcissus mentioned
in the same chapter is, of course, a different play from that mentioned in the text.
## p. 287 (#305) ############################################
Children's Plays not written by Masters 287
reward by her Majesty's command. By whom that part was acted I know
not, unless by Peter Carew, the pretty boy before mentioned.
A scene in Narcissus may have been suggested by this play,
as the History of Loyaltie and Bewtie may, possibly, have been
suggested by Cornish’s Triumpe of Love and Bewte, of 1515.
The revels accounts for 1571–2 contain the following:
John Tryce for mony to him due for Leashes, & Doghookes, with staves, &
other necessaries: by him provyded for the hunters that made the crye after
the fox (let loose in the Coorte) with theier howndes, hornes, and hallowing,
in the playe of narcisses. which crye was made, of purpose even as the
woordes then in utteraunce, & the parte then played, did Requier. . . . John
Izarde for mony to him due for his device in counterfeting Thunder &
Lightning in the playe of Narcisses.
For reasons which will soon appear, it seems improbable that
Nathaniel Giles, the last of the masters with whom we are
concerned, composed any plays for production by the children.
But the répertoire of the boys was probably not confined, even
in the early years of their histrionic career, to the plays written
by their masters. Unfortunately, the early records are too scanty
and too indefinite to permit of very positive statements on this
point. As early, however, as 1584, two of the most distinguished
authors of the time had written for them. John Lyly's Campaspe
and Sapho and Phao were played before the queen by the children
of the chapel in conjunction with the children of Paul's before
this date, and another play by the same author, Love's Meta-
morphosis, originally written for the children of Paul's, was trans-
ferred to the chapel boys at some date before its publication in
1601. One of the most interesting of the plays of George Peele,
and, in the opinion of some critics, his best play, The Araygnement
of Paris, also bears upon the title-page of the first edition (1584) the
statement that it had been presented before the Queenes Majestie
by the Children of her Chappell. ' Fleay, indeed, assigns the pre-
sentation of it to 5 February 1581, and the same writer gives 1581
as the date for Campaspe and 1582 as the date for Sapho and
Phao. These dates seem probable; but we are not here concerned
with their accuracy, as the essential fact is that both Lyly and
Peele wrote for the children of the chapel. That Greene wrote
anything for them is unlikely, but the Tragedie of Dido Queene
of Carthage, by Marlowe and Nashe, is stated on the title-page to
have been played by them, and it is highly probable that it was
they who played Nashe's Pleasant Comedie, called Summers last
will and Testament at Croydon in September 1592. The play
alluded to here as having been presented by the same company
## p. 288 (#306) ############################################
288
The Chapel Royal
in the preceding summer was, according to one of Fleay's con-
jectures, Marlowe and Nashe's Dido; according to another, the
anonymous Warres of Cyrus, published in 1600; we have no
means of knowing whether it was either.
To one unfamiliar with the stage history of the time these
records might seem inadequate evidence for the brilliant and
influential histrionic career ascribed to the children of the chapel.
But those who know how scanty the records are will recognise
that no other company in these early years presents greater claims
to having exercised a real leadership in the drama. The children
of Paul's were, indeed, at one time served by Lyly as dramatist? ;
but he began with the children of the chapel, who seem, in fact,
to have been pioneers in many important features of both dramatic
and histrionic development. That there were other companies
of boys—notably those of Paul's and those of Windsor, those of
Westminster school and those of Merchant Taylors'—and that
many companies of men players performed at court and in public,
does not detract from their primacy in these early years.
The opinion expressed above that Nathaniel Giles, who, as will
be seen, became master in 1597, wrote nothing for the chapel boys
is a mere conjecture, but is supported by two facts: first, that
not long after he became master he seems to have allowed other
men to use his commission to procure boys for the chapel to
provide a company of professional child actors; and that, from
this time onward, the actual choir boys of the chapel do not seem
to have taken any part in the presentation of plays at court or in
public. Since the professional company was supplied with plays
by professional dramatists, and the boys under the immediate
personal care of Giles did not produce plays, it is very improbable
that he wrote any.
On 9 June 1597, Nathaniel Giles, bachelor of music and master
of the children of St George's chapel, Windsor, became master of
the children of the Chapel Royal, in succession to William Hunnis.
By a privy seal of 3 July, he was authorised to take up boys
for the service of the chapel. No essentially new provision
appears in this commission. Giles is authorised to take up'suche
1 That Lyly ever occupied the official position of vice-master (i. e. assistant master)
of Paul's, seems a solemn inference from a jesting satire. Harvey says he 'played
the Vicemaster of Poules and the Foolemaster of the Theater. ' Was there, then, s
Foolemaster of the Theater? That neither epithet need be taken seriously is indicated
by the additional.
sometime the fiddlesticke of Oxford, now the very bable of London. '
So far as we know, there was no such officer as vice-master of Paul's. Vice,' in
• Vicemaster,' is, doubtless, the counterpart of 'Foole,' in ‘Foolemaster. '
6
## p. 289 (#307) ############################################
Theatrical Company of Children of Chapel 289
a
and so many children as he or his sufficient Deputie shall thinke
meete,' and to provide 'sufficient lodging for him and the sayd
Children, when they for our service shall remove to any place or
places'; but the former clause is repeated from earlier commissions,
and the latter would never have seemed anything more than a
more explicit expression of a similar clause in previous com-
missions but for the events which ensued. At some unknown
date after the issue of this commission, James Robinson and Henry
Evans joined with Giles in exploiting the commission. They took
up more boys than were needed for the chapel choir, lodged them
in Blackfriars and established a regular theatrical company of the
children of the chapel.
The highest interest attaches to this professional company of
boy actors, but it is at present impossible to determine exactly
when their career began. The Blackfriars property was purchased
from Sir William More on 4 February 1596 by James Burbage,
apparently because of its suitability for a playhouse. In November
of the same year, the inhabitants of Blackfriars petitioned the
privy council against Burbage, declaring that he is now altering
it and meaneth very shortly to convert and turne the same into
a common playhouse. ' How effective this petition was in hindering
or delaying the projected playhouse we have no means of knowing
Burbage died early in the following year, and the next unmis-
takable evidence we have in regard to the Blackfriars playhouse
is that, on 2 September 1600, Richard Burbage, son of James,
leased it for twenty-one years to one Henry Evans; but it is
certain that, before this date, it had been used as a playhouse by
the children of the chapel, and that Evans was already interested
in the company. In testimony given in a lawsuit in 1612, Richard
Burbage says:
true yt is that this defendant, consideringe with himselfe that, except the said
Evans could erect and keepe a companye of Playinge boyes and others to
playe playes and interludes in the said Playhouse in such sort as before tyme
had bene there used, etc. ;
and Evans speaks of the playhouse as 'then or late in the tenure
or occupacion of this defendant' (i. e. Evans himself). It is com-
monly held that the children of the chapel were playing there as
early as the end of 1598, and this is probably true.
The evidence we have seems to indicate that Giles was only
6
6
1 The order for the suppression of the Blackfriars playhouse, dated 21 January
1619, states, however, that their honors then (i. e. in 1596) forbad the use of the said
house for playes. '
E. L VI. CH. XI.
19
## p. 290 (#308) ############################################
290
The Chapel Royal
passively interested in the project, and that someone else—perhaps
Henry Evans—first saw the great possibilities which lay in pro-
curing, under the liberal terms of Giles's commission, a company of
boy actors and exploiting them in the private playhouse of the
Blackfriars. After about a year and a half of experience, we may
suppose, Evans decided to take a long lease of the property, and
this was effected on 2 September 1600. It was not very long,
however, before he got into trouble about taking up boys. On an
ill-fated Saturday, 13 December 1600, James Robinson, acting as
deputy for Giles and as agent for Evans, seized Thomas Clifton,
a thirteen-year-old boy, as he was on his way to school. Unfor-
tunately, the boy's father, Henry Clifton, esquire, of Toft Trees,
Norfolk, not only secured the aid of Sir John Fortescue, one
of the privy council, to have his son released, but, about a year
later, brought the matter before the court of Star chamber. A
decree was rendered censuring Evans for taking up gentlemen's
sons and ordering the severance of his connection with the
company and playhouse. In anticipation, perhaps, of these pro-
ceedings, Evans, in October 1601, transferred all his property to
his son-in-law, Alexander Hawkins. After the decree was rendered,
Evans, acting through Hawkins, further entered into an agreement
with Edward Kirkham, William Rastall and Thomas Kendall, allowing
them to share in the management and profits of the playhouse. This
is not the place to recite the quarrels between these shareholders;
it may suffice to record that the success of the children was very
great, that the profits of the undertaking are said to have been very
large and that the company continued, with some vicissitudes, to
act as the children of the chapel until, at the accession of James,
they were re-named the children of the queen’s revels, and, finally,
were replaced by the company of men to which Shakespeare
belonged.
During these years, this professional troupe of boys was
served by some of the foremost dramatists of their time.
Among the earliest was, doubtless, Chapman, who, perhaps, joined
them in 1598, when he left the employ of Henslowe. He appears
to have written for them his May-Day, his Sir Gyles Goosecappe,
his Gentleman Usher and the extant version of Al Fooles. Another
even more notable writer for their stage was Ben Jonson, from
whom they received not only The Case is Altered, but, also, Cynthia's
Revels, Poetaster and, perhaps, A Tale of a Tub. There is also
some reason to believe that some of Marston's plays were written
for them. Unfortunately, much of the stage history of the time is
## p. 291 (#309) ############################################
Ages of the Children. Songs and Music 291
purely conjectural, but it seems practically certain that their vogue
had become so great by 1601–2 as to draw from Shakespeare the
airily satirical lines in Hamlet concerning the 'eyrie of children,
little eyases, that cry out on the top of question and are most
tyranically clapped for it. '
The names of some of these boy actors of this later period are
known, some from Henry Clifton's bill of complaint and some from
the lists in Ben Jonson's plays. One of them, Salathiel Pavy, as is
well known, died early, and was celebrated by Jonson in a graceful,
if somewhat 'conceited,' epitaph, full of the highest praise for his
abilities as an actor. Others became renowned as members of the
king's company in later years.
As to the ages of the boys, it is difficult to speak with
certainty. Young Clifton was thirteen years old when 'taken
up,' and William Hunnis found it necessary, in earlier times (1583),
'to kepe bothe a man servant to attend upon them and lykewyse a
woman servant to wash and kepe them cleane. ' In the case of the
boys of the choir, it was customary, from early times, for the sovereign
to provide for their education at one of the universities so soon as
their 'breasts (i. e. voices) changed'; but, no doubt, when their prin-
cipal function was acting they were held longer as children of the
chapel, and Philip Gawdy writes in 1601: "'Tis sayde my Lady of
Leoven bath marryed one of the playing boyes of the chappell. '
The success of the companies of choir boys in both early and
later times was, doubtless, due, in no small degree, to the songs
scattered through their plays and the instrumental music before
the play began and between the acts. Other companies, of course,
had incidental songs, but, apparently, not so many of them, and
instrumental music seems not to have been given in the public
theatres. That it was a prominent feature of the performances
given by the boys, notwithstanding Clifton's declaration that his
son and other boys taken up by Robinson, Evans and Giles were
childeren noe way able or fitt for singing, nor by anie of the sayd
confederates endevoured to be taught to sing,' we know from pas-
sages in several contemporary plays, as well as from the explicit
statements of the duke of Stettin, who visited Blackfriars on
18 September 1602.
The special interest felt by queen Elizabeth in the chapel
boys at Blackfriars may have been due, in part, at least, to their
music. At any rate, there cannot be any doubt of her interest in
them. According to a letter from Sir Dudley Carleton to John
Chamberlain, she attended the play at Blackfriars on Tuesday,
6
194%
## p. 292 (#310) ############################################
292
The Chapel Royal
She was
29 December 1601. The duke of Stettin speaks, indeed, as if the
,
queen had established the theatre and provided the rich costumes
of the plays, but the evidence in the suit of Kirkham vs Evans et
als (1612) indicates that the managers, Evans, Kirkham and their
fellows, bore all expenses and took all profits. Kirkham was,
indeed, yeoman of the revels, and had charge of the costumes
and properties provided for the revels at court, but, though he
may have been able to borrow from the revels garments for the
use of his company, he could not have bought them without special
authorisation. There is no evidence that the queen had any
active part in the establishment or maintenance of the children of
Blackfriars, though, of course, the company could not have been
established or maintained without her tacit consent.
fond of the drama and of music. On 8 April 1600, the privy
council addressed a letter to the Middlesex justices expressing
the queen's pleasure in the performances of Edward Alleyn and
his company, and her desire that he should be allowed to erect the
Fortune theatre.
Hasty as this survey of the long and brilliant career of the
children of the chapel has, necessarily, been, it can hardly fail to
have suggested their very great importance in the history of the
drama and the stage. They were pioneers in more than one
interesting movement, they produced plays by some of the fore-
most dramatists of their time, they were prominent in the curious,
not to say ludicrous, 'war of the theatres,' and they were finally
put down because of the vigorous political satire spoken through
their mouths.
1
## p. 293 (#311) ############################################
CHAPTER XII
UNIVERSITY PLAYS
TUDOR AND EARLY STEWART PERIODS
It has been pointed out earlier in this work that, while the
humanist movement at Oxford and Cambridge in the sixteenth
century did not result in any important contributions to classical
scholarship, it was remarkable for the production of a large
number of Latin plays? In the previous volume? , the rise of the
renascence academic drama on the continent was briefly traced,
and its influence on early Tudor comedy, especially school plays,
illustrated. But, in England, school plays had a comparatively
limited vogue. It was at the universities that the humanist drama,
written and acted by scholars, found its real home. Originating
in didactic tendencies, and encouraged, as has been shown, by the
framers of college statutes, its aims, at first, were educational rather
than literary or recreative. But, amidst the medley of plastic in-
fluences in English university life, it was inevitable that drama at
Oxford and Cambridge should not remain purely academic, in the
narrower pedagogic sense. The gradually increasing proportion of
plays in the vernacular produced on college stages, the ceremonial
visits of kings and queens and other royal personages to 'shows'
at the two seats of learning, the attractions, for the scholar play-
wrights and their audiences, of controversies, whether local and
personal or of national significance—these were among the factors
which speedily enlarged the bounds of university drama, and
developed within it that variety of types which the following pages
will attempt to sketch. But, to the last, it remained conscious, at
least intermittently, of its distinctive origin and mission. Though
influencing the popular stage, and being influenced by it in turn,
yet, in the main, it followed an independent and diverging track,
and it has both merits and limitations which are peculiarly its own.
i See vol. II, p. 424. See vol. v, chap. v, pp. 100 ff. 3 See ibid. p. 103.
## p. 294 (#312) ############################################
294
University Plays
5
Mummery and impersonation in their more primitive forms can
be traced back at the universities to the later fourteenth century.
Though Warton's reference to the fragment of an ancient ac-
compt-roll of the dissolved college of Michael-House in Cambridge'
(it was merged in Trinity college) containing expenditure, under
1386, on a comedia, cannot now be verified, it may reasonably be
taken as authentic. The statutes of New college, Oxford (1400)
and of King's college, Cambridge (1443) expressly provide for the
celebration of the favourite medieval ceremony of the boy bishop'
on the feast of the Innocents and of St Nicholas's day respectively.
In the King's college account-books there is an entry of expenses
incurred circa ludos on Christmas day, 1582, and of a payment
lusoribus in aula collegii, on the following day. Similar entries of
expenditure on Christmas ludi or 'disgysynges' are found in 1489,
1496, and later? The account-books of Magdalen college, Oxford,
show that provision was made for 'the bishop' on St Nicholas's
day frequently between 1482 and 1530, as well as for scriptural
ludi on the chief church festivals, and miscellaneous interludes
and entertainments. The register of Merton college, Oxford,
records the election of another mock dignitary, Rex Fabarum
or king of beans, who was chosen on or about the eve of St Edmund
(19 November). In the first entry, in 1485, the election is said
to be per antiquam consuetudinem, and the names of successive
'kings' are given annually till 1539, when the ceremony seems
to have fallen into disuse?
It was while such medieval plays and ceremonies retained
a flickering vitality that humanist drama at the universities began.
At Oxford, the mention in the Magdalen accounts for the first time
of a comedia in 1535, and, again, in 1539, and of a tragedia in 1540,
probably indicates the transition to neo-classic types. According
to Anthony à Wood, the Magdalen comedy of 1535 was Piscator
or The Fisher Caught, by John Hoker, a fellow of the society. In
1536, the Plutus of Aristophanes was acted in Greek at St John's
college, Cambridge. The production in 1546 of the Athenian play-
wright's Eiphvn or Pax, by John Dee the astrologer, at Trinity
college, Cambridge, of which he was a fellow, seems, also, to have
been in the original tongue. But these precedents were not
6
See Plays performed in Cambridge Colleges before 1585 by Smith, G. C. Moore in
Fasciculus Joanni Willis Clark dicatus, p. 267.
· The register is in MS, but the present writer has been given facilities for
consulting it.
## p. 295 (#313) ############################################
Nicholas Grimald
295
followed, and there appears to be no record of a classical tragedy
being acted in Greek on the Tudor university stage'.
Seneca, not Sophocles, was the pattern of the English humanist
when he essayed to write tragedy? It is thus typical of the
blending of old and new influences that the earliest extant uni-
versity plays should be on scriptural subjects, and should be cast
in approximately Senecan mould. Their author was Nicholas
Grimald, born in 1519, and a member, successively, of Christ's
college, Cambridge, and of Brasenose, Merton and Christ Church,
Oxford
The first of these plays, Christus Redivivus, printed at Cologne
in 1543, was written and acted at Brasenose, as Grimald relates in
a dedicatory epistle, soon after his migration to Oxford in 1540.
It combines a Senecan treatment of the Gospel story of the
resurrection, in which Mary Magdalene plays the most effective
part, with a comic underplot centring in the four Roman
soldiers who guard the sepulchre, and who are cleverly dis-
criminated types of the military braggart. Grimald's second
tragedy, Archipropheta, printed at Cologne in 1548, was written
in 1547, on his election to the newly constituted society of Christ
Church. It dealt with the career of John the Baptist, which
Buchanan had already dramatised in his Baptistes, acted at
Bordeaux a few years previously*.
But, in spirit and in style, the two plays are remarkably
different from each other. The Scottish humanist follows the
strict Senecan model, and makes the Baptist the mouthpiece of
his own political and religious opinions. In Grimald's work, John
plays a comparatively passive part. The interest centres in the
voluptuous passion of Herod and his unlawful wife Herodias,
which is portrayed with a lyrical intensity and opulence of phrase
unmatched in Tudor drama till the time of Marlowe. Equally
foreign to the scriptural theme and to the Senecan convention is
the comic note struck by Herod's fool, Gelasimus.
These two Latin tragedies of Grimald, if they were known to
Roger Ascham, did not earn from him in The Scholemaster the
1 John Cristopherson, according to Warton, exhibited in 1546 at Trinity college,
of which he was afterwards master, a Jephtha of his own composition in Greek and in
Latin. The MS of the Greek play is in the library of Trinity college.
Smith, G. C. Moore, u. s. , pp. 269–270, mentions performances at Cambridge
of Troas, 1551/2 and 1560/1, Oedipus and Hecuba, 1559/60, and Medea, 1560/1 and
1563. These were almost certainly Seneca's plays (Troas = Troades).
3 On Grimald's English poems, see vol. 11 of the present work, pp. 179, 180.
* See vol. in of the present work, p. 161.
## p. 296 (#314) ############################################
296
University Plays
commendation of being ‘able to abyde the free touch of Aris-
totles preceptes and Euripides examples' which he reserved for
Buchanan's Jephthes and the Absalom of Thomas Watson of St
John's, Cambridge. Watson, owing to scruples on a minor metrical
point, never published the play; but it is probably that preserved
in the Stowe MSS 957, which is a tragedy of the strict Senecan
type. The story of the revolt in the royal house of Israel lent
itself as naturally to Senecan machinery as did legendary dynastic
feuds of early British kings, and Chusi's relation to David, in act
iv, of the overthrow of Absalom's ill-armed troops and of his
hapless end, is a vivid piece of narrative.
Religious drama of an entirely different type made its appear-
ance on the Cambridge stage when, during the Lent of 1545,
Kirchmayer's Pammachius was acted at Christ's college. Though
it was condensed for the occasion, no excisions could disguise
its savage anti-papal satire. It was inevitable that the orthodox
chancellor of the university, Gardiner, bishop of Winchester,
should write letters of remonstrance to the vice-chancellor, and
order him to hold an enquiry concerning the performance. Dis-
satisfied with the report, Gardiner laid the matter before the privy
council, which instructed the vice-chancellor to reprove the
offenders, but took no further disciplinary measures. The members
of Christ's college probably avoided controversial dramas in
future ; but entries in the college accounts testify to great dramatic
activity in the immediately following years. The leading spirit
in these entertainments was William Stevenson, who entered
Christ's in 1546, graduated B. A. in 1550, M. A. in 1553 and B. D. in
1560, and was twice elected a fellow of the college. A play by him
is mentioned in the accounts for 1550—1, and, again, in those for
1551—2; and, in the following year, he is reimbursed 18d. for ex-
penses on his 'plaies. ' There is another entry of a play by him in
1553—4, and a final one in 1559—60, during the second tenure of his
fellowship. Hence, it has been plausibly conjectured that Steven-
son is the author of Gammer Gurtons Nedle, 'played on stage,
not longe ago in Christes Colledge in Cambridge. Made by
Mr S. Mr of Art. '
The first edition of this comedy was not published till 1575, but
its printer Colwell had obtained, in 1562/3, a licence to issue
Dyccon of Bedlam. As ‘Diccon the Bedlem' is the leading figure in
1 The traditional ascription of the play to John Still rests merely upon a conjecture
of Isaac Reed in 1782, and may be dismissed. But it is remarkable that John Bridges,
dean of Salisbury, a member of Pembroke college, is spoken of in two of the Martin
Marprelate tracts, 1588, as the reputed author of the comedy.
## p. 297 (#315) ############################################
Gammer Gurtons Nedle
297
'Mr S. 's' play, the licence probably refers to it, and there are
bibliographical grounds for the conjecture that the work was
printed long before it was put on sale. A reference to arrest ‘in
the kings name' in act v suggests that the comedy was written
before the death of Edward VI in July 1553. If Stevenson were
its author, it would thus appear to have been composed between
1550 and 1553, and, if the title-page is to be trusted, revived later,
probably in 1559—60. However this may be, Gammer Gurtons
Nedle is of enduring interest as the earliest university play in
English which has come down to us. At first sight, it shows little
trace of scholarly influences. The fourteener' in which it is
'
mainly written is a rough and tumble metre; and the dialogue,
;
often coarse in strain, is, as a rule, in that south-western dialect
which became the conventional form of rustic speech on the
Elizabethan stage. The plot turns on the complications produced
in a small village society by the loss of the gammer's needle, and
the characters are typically English, including Diccon, who com-
bines the rôles of a Vice and a vagrant Tom of Bedlam. But, on
closer examination, the effect of classical models is seen. The
comedy is divided into acts and scenes, and the plot has a real
organic unity. The parts played by the different personages in the
village community, from “Master Baily' and the curate downward,
are neatly discriminated. The triumph of pastoral convention
had not yet blurred for English humanists the outlines of genuine
English country life.
The golden period of academic drama may be dated from the
visits paid by queen Elizabeth to the two universities early in her
reign. The visit to Cambridge began on 5 August 1564, and, in
a letter from Grindal, bishop of London, written about three
weeks before, the university authorities were admonished to
put themselves in all readinesse to please her Majestie, to welcome her with
all manner of scholastical exercises, viz. with Sermons, both in English and
Latin; Disputations in all kinds of Faculties; and playing of Comedies and
Tragedies; Oratios and Verses, both in Latin and Greek.
Under the direction of Roger Kelke, 'who was by the Vice-
Chancellor and Heads of Colleges specially appointed to set forth
and teach such plays as could be exhibited before her Grace,' a
varied dramatic programme was provided. It began with a per-
formance of the Auularia of Plautus? on the evening of Sunday,
* Plautus appears to have been the favourite classical dramatist at Cambridge in
the sixteenth century. Smith, G. C. Moore, U. 8. , pp. 269–271, records sixteen per-
formances of his plays between 1549 and 1583; four performances of comedies by
Terence are noted during the same period.
6
## p. 298 (#316) ############################################
298
University Plays
6 August, in King's college chapel. A great stage containing the
breadth of the Church from the one side to the other' was erected
for the performance at the queen's own cost, and so keen was her
interest that she remained till the final plaudite, without betraying
the slightest weariness, though some of her suite grew impatient,
owing to their ignorance of Latin or their desire for sleep.
On the following evening, a tragedy called Dido, written by
Edward Halliwell, fellow of King's college, was performed. It was
in hexameter verse, and drawn, for the most part, from the Aeneid.
Like the earlier school drama on the same subject, acted before
Wolsey in 1532", it is not extant; but the contemporary narrative
of Nicholas Robinson describes it as novum opus sed venustum et
elegans, though considered too long by some carping spectators.
A still more regrettable loss is that of the next evening's
play, Ezechias, an English Biblical drama by Nicholas Udalla.
As Udall was an Oxford man, and had been dead for about seven
years, the production of a play by him on this occasion is somewhat
remarkable, and was probably due to his long connection with
court entertainments. Though the work is not extant, the accounts
of the performance by Hartwell and Robinson show that it dealt
with Hezekiah's destruction of the idols of the grove and the
brazen serpent, the resentment of the populace, the mission of
Rabshakeh at the head of the Assyrian host and the mysterious
destruction of the invaders in a single night. As in the case of
miracle-plays, lighter episodes were evidently mingled with
Biblical incidents. Mirum vero quantum hic facetiarum, quantum
leporis in re tam seria ac sancta, et veritatis tamen certa serie
nunquam interrupta.
Great 'preparations and charges' had been 'employed and
spent about' another play, Ajax Flagellifer, a Latin version of the
Sophoclean tragedy, which was to be given on 9 August, the eve of
the queen's departure. But she was so much wearied by her
exertions that the performance had to be abandoned Before her
departure on the following morning, Elizabeth gave a present in
money and other marks of her favour to Thomas Preston, fellow
of King's, afterwards author of Cambises, king of Persia, who
had pleased her by his acting in Dido and his skill in disputation.
This visit of the queen to Cambridge had its counterpart two
* See ante, vol. v, chap. v, p. 102.
: On Udall'8 other plays, see ante, vol. v, chap. v, pp.
