King's Men (playing company)

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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.

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

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.^[1] 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. 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.)

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.

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.^[2] 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 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.^[3]

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

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, with a tile roof. During the winter of 1613-14 the company played at Court sixteen times.

In 1614 Alexander Cooke and William Ostler both died; they were replaced by William Ecclestone and (perhaps) 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.

On March 13, 1619, Richard Burbage died. In April Joseph Taylor transferred from the Duke of York's/Prince Charles' Men to take Burbage's place; he would play Hamlet and other Burbage roles. On March 27 the King's Men received a new patent, with a new list of sharers: to the core of long-established veterans (Condell and Lowin and Heminges), and three hired men who were now shareholders too (Underwood, Robinson, and Ecclestone), were now added Robert Benfield, Robert Goughe, John Shank, and newcomer Nathaniel Field.

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."^[4]

Around 1621, the King's Men performed The Duchess of Malfi again. When the play is printed for the first time two years later, in 1623, the quarto will contain a combined cast list for both the King's Men's productions, ca. 1614 and ca. 1621 (the latter occurredbetween the deaths of Burbage in 1619 and Tooley in 1623), which together give a picture of change and stability in the company in this era.^[5]

Ferdinand......Richard Burbage (1614) / Joseph Taylor (1621)

Bosola..........John Lowin (both)

Cardinal........Henry Condell / Richard Robinson

Antonio.........William Ostler / Robert Benfield

Delio.............John Underwood

Forobosco.....Nicholas Tooley

Pescara.........John Rice

Silvio ............Thomas Pollard

Madmen ........Nicholas Tooley, John Underwood

Duchess ........Robert Sharpe

Mistress.........John Thompson

Cariola,

Doctor, etc.....Robert Pallant

In addition to 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.)

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' 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' 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.

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.

The King's Men accompanied Charles I on a royal progress in 1636.

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.

By the time the theatres formally re-opened 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. 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.

[edit] Notes

1. ^ This increased workload was not unique to the King's Men; all the theatre companies of London saw greater demand from Court in the Jacobean era.
2. ^ Chambers, Vol. 2, p. 216.
3. ^ In addition to Much Ado, the Shakespearean plays peformed were Othello, The Tempest, A Winter's Tale, Julius Caesar, and both parts of Henry IV. Jonson's play was The Alchemist; the Beaumont and Fletcher plays were The Maid's Tragedy, The Captain, A King and No King, and Philaster (which was also performed twice). In addition to Cardenio, the other plays performed were Cyril Tourneur's lost play The Nobleman, and four anonymous works, The Merry Devil of Edmonton, The Twins' Tragedy, The Knot of Fools, and A Bad Beginning Makes a Good Ending—twenty performances of eighteen plays. The specific dates of the performances are not in the extant records. Chambers, Vol. 2, p. 217.
4. ^ Ann Jennalie Cook, The Privileged Playgoers of Shakespeare's London, 1576-1642, Princeton, New Jersey, Princeton University Press, 1981; pp. 120-1.
5. ^ F. E. Halliday, Shakespeare Companion, pp. 86 and 144.

[edit] References

• Bentley, G. E. The Jacobean and Caroline Stage. 7 Volumes, Oxford, the Clarendon Press, 1941-68.
• Chambers, E. K. The Elizabethan Stage. 4 Volumes, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1923.
• Halliday, F. E. A Shakespeare Companion 1564–1964. Baltimore, Penguin, 1964.