King's Men (playing company): Difference between revisions

For other uses, see King's Men.

The King's Men was the company of actors to which William Shakespeare belonged through most of his career. Formerly known as The Lord Chamberlain's Men during the reign of Queen Elizabeth, it became The King's Men in 1603 when King James ascended the throne and became the company's patron.

The royal patent of May 19, 1603 that charters the King's Men names the following players, in this order: Lawrence Fletcher, William Shakespeare, Richard Burbage, Augustine Phillips, John Heminges, Henry Condell, William Sly, Robert Armin, Richard Cowley, "and the rest of their associates...." The nine cited by name became Grooms of the Chamber. On March 15, 1604, each of the nine men named in the patent was supplied with four and a half yards of red cloth for the coronation procession.

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A chronology of important developments in the history of the King's Men in Shakespeare's era would include the following:

To 1610:
In their first winter season, between December 1603 and February 1604, the company performed eight times at Court. In their second, from November 1604 through February 1605, they performed eleven times at Court, including seven plays by Shakespeare (The Merchant of Venice twice), and two by Ben Jonson. This represented a workload twice as great as was typical under Elizabeth. The King's Men needed more Men. In 1604 the number of sharers was increased from eight or nine to twelve. The new sharers included John Lowin and Alexander Cooke; one of the new men, Samuel Crosse, unfortunately died a year or so later, and was replaced by Nicholas Tooley.

May 1605 brought the death of Augustine Phillips. In his will, Phillips left legacies to Shakespeare, Burbage, and eight other members of the company, plus two apprentices, and £5 to the hired men "of the company which I am of." (Phillips also leaves a bequest to Christopher Beeston, as a former "servant." Beeston was almost certainly another former apprentice.)

The company gave ten Court performances in the winter of 1605-6—and, unusually, three Court performances in the summer of 1606, during a state visit by the King of Denmark. Each Court performance earned them £10. They also toured that summer, and were in Oxford at the end of July, among other stops. Nine performances at Court marked the winter of 1606-7, including a Dec. 26 performance of King Lear; the following winter, 1607-8, saw thirteen Court appearances.

From July through December 1608 the theatres were closed due to plague. The King's Men toured the countryside; they were in Coventry in late October. The Blackfriars Theatre, owned by the Burbage family, was organized into a partnership in August of that year, with five of the seven shares going to members of the King's Men—Shakespeare, Burbage, Heminges, Condell, and Sly. Sly, however, died soon after, and his share was split among the other six. (The two non-actors involved in the arrangement were Cuthbert Burbage, Richard's brother, and Thomas Evans, agent for theatre manager Henry Evans.)

The acquisition of the Blackfriars represented an enormous advantage for the company. It allowed the company to perform year round instead of only in clement weather. The Blackfriars hall is thought to have been 66 feet by 46 feet, including stage; its maximum capacity was likely in the hundreds of spectators. Compare the maximum capacity of 2500 to 3000 for the Globe. Yet the ticket prices at the Blackfriars were five to six times higher than those at the Globe. Globe tickets ranged in price from a penny to sixpence (1d. to 6d.); tickets at the Blackfriars ranged from sixpence to two shillings sixpence (6d. to 2s. 6d.; 1 shilling = 12 pence). The cheapest admission at the Blackfriars equalled the most expensive at the Globe; the most expensive seat at the Blackfriars cost five times as much as its Globe counterpart. Adding the Blackfriars to the Globe should have allowed the King's Men to at least double their income from public performances.

Their new wealth allowed the King's Men to overcome major adversity: when the Globe Theatre burned down in 1613 (see below), the company could afford an expensive rebuild, replacing the vulnerable thatch roof with tile. The fact that the King's Men had a second theatre meant that they didn't lose all their playscripts and costumes, as the Admiral's/Palsgrave's Men would do in the Fortune Theare fire of Dec. 1621 (a disaster that was, for that company, the beginning of the end).

1609 was another plague year during which the company travelled. Nine plays were performed at Court that year. (Royal patronage was an advantage in difficult times: special payments in times of plague were made to the company in 1603, 1608, 1609, and 1610.)

1610 was a better year, with public performances at the Globe—Othello and Jonson's Sejanus among others. By this time the company had been augmented by John Underwood and William Ostler, both veterans of the Children of the Chapel/Queen's Revels company.

To 1623:
In 1611 Jonson's Catiline was performed; apart from Richard Robinson's substitution for Armin, the cast roster was the same as for Sejanus the previous year. This may have been John Heminges' last production; in 1613 he's described as "stuttering." Heminges normally received the payments for the company's Court performances, as far back as 1595; he continued to be active in the company's financial affairs even after he left the stage.

Between October 1611 and April 1612 the King's Men acted 22 plays at Court, including The Winter's Tale and The Tempest. Their connection with The Second Maiden's Tragedy also dates from this period; the manuscript of that play reveals that Robert Gough was cast as Memphonius, while Richard Robinson was the Lady.

On Sunday, Jan. 12, and Monday, Jan. 13, 1612, the King's Men joined with Queen Anne's Men to give Court performances of two Queen's Men's plays by Thomas Heywood, The Silver Age and The Rape of Lucrece. No cast list for these performances has survived; but given the two companies' known personnel, this might have been the first time Christopher Beeston acted with his old colleagues since leaving the Lord Chamberlain's Men nearly a decade earlier.

The winter of 1612-13 saw the great Court festivities celebrating the marriage of the Elector Palatine to King James' daughter Princess Elizabeth. The King's Men gave 20 performances, including seven plays by Shakespeare (Much Ado About Nothing twice), one by Jonson—and four by Beaumont and Fletcher, reflecting their growing popularity with audiences and dominance in the King's Men's repertoire. The mysterious Cardenio, allegedly by Shakespeare and Fletcher, was also performed.

Cardenio was peformed again at Court on June 8, 1613, before the ambassador from Savoy.

The Beaumont and Fletcher folios of 1647 and 1679 provide partial cast lists for three King's Men productions from the ca. 1613 period, for Fletcher's Bonduca and Valentinian and the Beaumont/Fletcher collaboration The Captain:

	Captain	Bonduca	Valentinian
Richard Burbage	✔	✔	✔
Henry Condell	✔	✔	✔
William Ostler	✔	✔	✔
John Lowin	...	✔	✔
Alexander Cooke	✔	...	...
John Underwood	...	✔	✔
Nicholas Tooley	...	✔	...
William Ecclestone	...	✔	...
Richard Robinson	...	✔	...

For Bonduca, Ecclestone is listed third, after Burbage and Condell; perhaps this is an indication that he played the female part of the title character.

On June 29, 1613, the Globe theatre burned down, its thatch roof set afire by squibs set off during a lavish performance of the Shakespeare/Fletcher Henry VIII. The Globe was rebuilt by the following spring, at a cost of £1400. The thatch roof was replaced with tile. During the winter of 1613-14 the company played at Court sixteen times.

In 1614 Alexander Cooke and William Ostler both died; their places as sharers were taken, perhaps, by William Ecclestone and Robert Benfield. Ostler's death may have been sudden—he'd performed in The Duchess of Malfi not long before—and was problemmatical in that he died intestate. His father-in-law, John Heminges, seized control of his theatre shares. Ostler's widow, Thomasine Heminges Ostler, sued her father in 1615 for control of the shares—a suit that was apparently unsuccessful.

In the winter of 1614-15 the King's Men performed at Court only eight times, half their wordload of the previous year. During the next winter, 1615-16, they were back up to fourteen Court performances.

On April 23, 1616, Shakespeare died. His role as the King's Men's leading playwright would be filled by Fletcher and his various collaborators through the coming years, with Philip Massinger assuming greater prominence in the 1630s. Nathaniel Field joined the company that year; already a prominent actor, he would go on to write plays for the King's Men in his all-too-brief career with the company.

1619 was a pivotal year in the company's history. The residents of the upscale Blackfriars neighborhood, many of whom were wealthy and influential politically and socially, had never been happy about the presence of a theatre in their midst; in the spring of 1619 they complained more loudly than usual about the traffic problems associated with the theatre, which blocked access to the local churches. (All the playing companies were required to cease activity during Lent—a requirement they flouted whenever possible, often with impunity.) In reponse to this local opposition, the King's Men obtained a renewal of their royal patent dated March 27, 1619. The patent named the twelve current shareholders in the company; in addition to the veterans Burbage, Lowin, Heminges, and Condell, the list includes William Ecclestone, Robert Gough, Richard Robinson, Nicholas Tooley, and John Underwood, and the newest members, Nathaniel Field, Robert Benfield, and John Shank. Shank would be the company's primary clown in the years to come; his specialties were dancing and knockabout physical comedy. Robert Gough had been associated with the actors of the company perhaps as far back as 1591, when he may have been a boy player in The Seven Deadly Sins; he received a legacy in the 1603 will of Thomas Pope, and he witnessed the 1605 will of Augustine Phillips, whose sister he most likely married. Gough was never a prominent actor, and little is known about the roles he played.

In one particular, the new patent was out of date the day it was issued. On March 13, 1619, Richard Burbage died. In April Joseph Taylor transferred from Prince Charles's Men to take Burbage's place; he would play Hamlet and other Burbage roles. Yet Burbage was missed: in May 1619 the Lord Chamberlain, William Herbert, 3rd Earl of Pembroke, wrote to a colleague that while others had gone to see a play, "I being tender-hearted, could not endure to see so soon after the loss of my old acquaintance Burbage."

Another blow hit the company in the following year, 1620, when Nathaniel Field died at the young age of 33. His place as sharer was taken by John Rice, one of the more obscure figures in the company's history. Rice had been a boy player and an apprentice of Heminges in the 1607-10 era, and he had been one of the original members of the Lady Elizabeth's Men in 1611. He re-joined the King's Men by 1619, when he participated in their controversial production of Sir John Van Olden Barnavelt, and likely became a sharer the next year. But he retired from the stage ca. 1625-6, and apprently joined the Church instead. Heminges's will of 1630 describes Rice as a clerk of St. Saviour's parish in Southwark, and names him an overseer of Heminges's estate.

Around 1621, the King's Men performed The Duchess of Malfi again. When the play was first printed two years later, in 1623, the quarto featured a combined cast list for both the King's Men's productions, ca. 1614 and ca. 1621 (the latter occurred between the deaths of Burbage in 1619 and Tooley in 1623). Together these cast lists give a mixed picture of change and stability in the company in this era.

	ca. 1614	ca. 1621
Ferdinand	Richard Burbage	Joseph Taylor
Bosola	John Lowin	same
Cardinal	Henry Condell	Richard Robinson
Antonio	William Ostler	Robert Benfield
Delio	John Underwood	same
Forobosco	Nicholas Tooley	same
Pescara	John Rice	same
Silvio	Thomas Pollard	same
Duchess	Robert Sharpe	same
Mistress	John Thompson	same
Cariola	Robert Pallant	same
Doctor, etc.	Robert Pallant	same

In both productions, Tooley and Underwood played the Madmen in addition to their other roles. Along with the permanent company members or sharers, the cast included four hired men or boys, Pallant, Pollard, Sharpe, and Thompson; note also the doubling (and in the case of Pallant, more than doubling) of roles.

1623: The First Folio gives a list of names of the 26 principal actors in Shakespeare's plays, providing a fairly comprehensive roster of important members of the Lord Chamberlain's/King's Men through the previous thirty years. In addition to eight men on the original 1603 royal patent (Shakespeare, Burbage, Heminges, Condell, Phillips, Cowley, Sly, and Armin), the list includes William Kempe, Thomas Pope, George Bryan, John Lowin, Samuel Crosse, Alexander Cooke, Samuel Gilburne, William Ostler, Nathaniel Field, John Underwood, Nicholas Tooley, William Ecclestone, Joseph Taylor, Robert Benfield, Robert Goughe, Richard Robinson, John Shank, and John Rice.

Sometime in 1623, the veteran clown William Rowley joined the King's Men for the final two years in his stage career. (He would play the Fat Bishop in the next year's A Game at Chess.) Richard Perkins, a leading actor from Queen Anne's Men and the Red Bull company, also joined the King's Men late in 1623.

To 1642:
1624: Eliard Swanston left the Lady Elizabeth's Men to join the King's Men. Previous Lady Elizabeth's veterans to join include Nathaniel Field, John Rice, and (via Prince Charles's Men) Joseph Taylor. Swanston is reported to have played Othello during his years with the company (which extended at least through 1642). Also in 1624, the King's Men gave their sensational production of Middleton's A Game at Chess, which ran for an unprecedented nine days straight (Aug. 6-16, Sundays excepted), and also got them prosecuted and fined by the Privy Council.

The spring of 1625 brought a period of uncertainty. The new king, Charles I, had long had his own troupe of actors, Prince Charles's Men; would he make them the new King's Men? The existing company's established prestige—they were widely recognized the best in the land—led to a continuance of royal patronage. The Prince Charles's company folded after their patron became king, with three of its members, Thomas Hobbs, William Penn, and Anthony Smith, joining the King's Men. Also in 1625, Richard Perkins terminated his period with the King's Men to become the leading man of the newly formed Queen Henrietta's Men.

1630-35: Upon John Heminges' death in 1630, his shares in the Globe and Blackfriars Theatres passed to his son William. Five years later, William Heminges sold (clandestinely, perhaps) two shares in the Blackfriars and three Globe shares to King's Man John Shank, for £506. In reponse to the sale, three other King's Men, Eliard Swanston, Thomas Pollard, and Robert Benfield, appealed to the Lord Chamberlain (then Philip Herbert, 4th Earl of Pembroke) for a chance to buy shares for themselves. Herbert ordered Shank to sell the three one share in each theatre.

Opposition from the King's Men's Blackfriars neighbors reached another peak around 1630. In 1631 a commission investigated the possibility of buying out the Blackfriars property, and concluded that the company's investment in the property, over the coming fourteen years of their unexpired lease, was £2900 13s. 4d. This figure, however, covered only theatre rent and interest; in response the King's Men produced an itemized account of their investment, valuing the whole at £21,990, more than seven times as much as the commission's figure. The company's interest in the theatre was never bought out.

In 1634, the annual income produced by a single share in the King's Men—not in either of the theatres, but in the acting troupe itself—was £180.

The King's Men accompanied Charles I on a royal progress in 1636. In so doing they evaded, at least to some degree, the consequences of the prolonged theatre closing due to plague in 1636-7.

Aftermath:
1642: the Puritan faction of Parliament gained control over the city of London at the beginning of the English Civil War, and ordered the closing of all theatres, an action that ended regular public theatrical performance in the London area—but curiously did not end all theatrical activity, as is often maintained. On March 24, 1646, the still-extant King's Men petitioned Parliament for three and a half years of back pay, though details of their activity in this period have not survived. Theatrical performances were common in the London theatres throughout 1647, in contravention of the local authorities, though details are scarce. Ten actors signed the dedication in the 1647 Beaumont and Fletcher folio as the King's Men; these were Robert Benfield, Theophilus Bird, Hugh Clarke, Stephen Hammerton, John Lowin, Thomas Pollard, Richard Robinson, Joseph Taylor, Eliard Swanston, and William Allen. The first seven men on that list, who had all been members of the company in 1642, also signed a contract as sharers in the King's Men on Jan. 28, 1648, showing that the company was re-activating, or attempting to re-activate, at that time. This iteration of the company collapsed in July of the same year when it failed to make a payment.

Another attempt followed during the winter of 1648-9, with a younger group of actors than the previous crew of veterans; this new group of 16 included Walter Clun and Charles Hart, who had played with the King's Men as boys before the 1642 closing. These two, plus eight more new members, signed a contract on Dec. 27, 1648 with one Walter Conway, an upholsterer who was their financier; but raids by London authorities in early 1649 [see: Salisbury Court Theatre] ended this attempt at a resurgence for the King's Men.

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By the time the theatres formally re-opened in 1660 after the monarchy was restored, few of the old players and playwrights remained, and the old theatrical practices and traditions had largely been lost. Female roles were soon performed by women rather than boys [see Edward Kynaston; Margaret Hughes], and the open-air playhouses common in the past were no more; the more elite higher-priced indoor theaters became the norm.

Although a new King's Company was established, it had little in common with its predecessor other than a royal patron (though the rare member of the old company, like Charles Hart, made the transition). The Restoration drama in which it participated was largely a new foundation. While Elizabethan and Jacobean classics were the mainstay of the Restoration repertory, many, particularly the tragedies, were adapted to conform to new tastes influenced by the French theatre of Louis XIV. The Elizabethan features of multitude of scenes, multitude of characters, and melange of genres lived on primarily in Restoration comedy.

References

• Bentley, G. E. The Jacobean and Caroline Stage. 7 Volumes, Oxford, the Clarendon Press, 1941-68.
• Cook, Ann Jennalie. The Privileged Playgoers of Shakespeare's London, 1576–1642. Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 1981.
• Chambers, E. K. The Elizabethan Stage. 4 Volumes, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1923.
• Gurr, Andrew. The Shakespearian Playing Companies. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1996.
• Gurr, Andrew. The Shakespearean Stage 1574–1642. Third edition, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1992.
• Halliday, F. E. A Shakespeare Companion 1564–1964. Baltimore, Penguin, 1964.