Playing company

In Renaissance London, playing company was the usual term for a company of actors. These companies were organized around a group of ten or so shareholders (or "sharers"), who performed in the plays but were also responsible for management. The sharers employed "hired men"—that is, the minor actors and the workers behind the scenes. Each company was based at one or two specific theatres in London; for example, William Shakespeare's company, the Lord Chamberlain's Men (later the King's Men), was based at the Globe Theatre and the Blackfriars Theatre.

Origins

The development of drama in England in the 16th and 17th centuries was not an entirely isolated phenomenon; similar dvelopment was simultaneously occurring in other European societies, to greater or lesser degrees. English actors shared a mutual influence with actors in neighboring countries, especially Scotland, France, Denmark, and states in northern Germany like Saxony and the Rhineland Palatinate. Yet conditions in other societies also differed widely from those in England; the following discussion should be understood to apply specifically to England in the 1500s and 1600s.

In the later Medieval and early Renaissance periods, wealthy and powerful English noble houses sometimes maintained a troupe of half a dozen "players," just as noblemen kept jesters or jugglers for entertainment. Indeed, in the early period the difference between players and acrobats and other entertainers was not hard and fast. A troupe of players, however, was more costly to keep than a jester; players (who usually had other household duties as well) could defray expenses by touring to various cities and performing for profit—a practice that began the evolution away from the medieval model of noble patronage and toward the commercial and capitalistic model of modern entertainment. It is from the scattered records of such touring, and from occassional performances at the English Royal Court, that our very limited knowledge of English Renaissance theatre in the early and middle 1500s derives.

One curious development of this era was the development of companies of pre-pubescent boy actors. The use of the boy player in companies of adult actors, to play female parts, can be traced far back in the history of medieval theatre, in the famous mystery and morality plays; the employment of casts of boys for entire dramatic productions began in the early 1500s, and utilized the boys' choirs connected with cathedrals, churches, and schools. In time the practice took on a professional aspect, and companies of child actors would play an important role in the development of drama, through the Elizabethan era and into the Jacobean and Caroline periods that followed. [See: Children of the Chapel; Children of Paul's; Beeston's Boys.]

The Elizabethan Age

The explosion of popular drama that began when James Burbage built the first fixed and permanent venue for drama, The Theatre, in 1576 was the one great step away from the medieval organizational model and toward the commercial theatre; but that evolution was, at best, a "work in progress" throughout the English Renaissance. Throughout this period, troupes of actors needed to maintain the patronage of a noble household. The prevailing legal system in England defined "masterless men" who travelled about the country as vagabonds, and subjected them to treatments of varying harshness. Local authorities tended to be more hostile than welcoming toward players; the Corporation of London, from the Lord Mayor and aldermen down, was famously hostile to acting troupes. Noble patronage was, at the very least, the legal fig leaf that allowed professional players to function in society.

In some cases, moreso toward the end of the period, noble patronage was nothing more than that legal fig leaf; a company of actors was an independent entity, financially and otherwise. Conversely, some noblemen were beneficent patrons of their players. The Lords Hunsdon—Henry Carey, 1st Baron Hunsdon (ca. 1524-96), and his son George Carey, 2nd Baron Hunsdon (1547-1603)—were valuable protectors of their own company, and, when they served in the office of Lord Chamberlain (1585-96 and 1597-1603 respectively), of English drama as a whole.

That Hunsdon's troupe, known to posterity as The Lord Chamberlain's Men, was organized somewhat like a modern joint-stock commercial company (the concept of which was just beginning to evolve in this era) at its re-formation in 1594, after a long theatre closing due to plague. The company had a small number of partners or shareholders, who pooled their funds to pay expenses and in turn shared the profits, in what was largely a de-facto democratic way (at least for the sharers, if not for the hired men and apprentices they employed). Their main rivals, the Admiral's Men, suffered in contrast under a less ideal version of capitalist organization: Philip Henslowe functioned more like a blend of big-business autocrat, landlord, and loan shark. He managed multiple companies of actors and built and owned several theatres, and controlled players (sharers included) and playwrights by doling out payments and loans. (The silver lining in this cloud is that Henslowe's surviving financial records provide a wealth of detailed knowledge about the theatre conditions in his era that is unparalleled by any other source.) Other companies varied between these extremes of organization.

Drama in th age of Elizabeth was at best an organized disorder; activity in the London theatres could be proscribed for months, even years, due to outbreaks of bubonic plague; suppression of individual companies, and even the profession as a whole, for political reasons was not unknown. [See: The Isle of Dogs.] Theatres caught fire and burned down. Local residents sometimes opposed theatres in their neighborhoods. Individual companies of actors struggled and failed and recombined in a dizzy dance; tracking the changes has been the obsession of scholars and the bain of students.

Yet the drama was also enormously popular, from the Queen and Court down to the commonest of the common people; indeed, the odd polarity of the theatre audience in this period, with the High and the Low favoring the drama, and the middle class generally more hostile with the growth of Puritan sentiments, is a surprising and intriguing phenomenon. Theatres proliferated, especially (though not exclusively) in neighborhoods outside the city's walls and the Corporation's control: Shoreditch to the north, or the Bankside and Paris Garden in Southwark, on the southern bank of the Thames: the Curtain, the Rose, the Swan, the Fortune, the Globe, the Blackfrairs—a famous roster; and each theatre occupied by a company of players, at least one, and sometimes more.

The Jacobean and Caroline Eras

King James, "VI and I," was passionately fond of drama; and dramatic activity accelerated in reponse from the start of his reign. Consider the following figures.

In roughly the last decade of Elizabeth's reign, 1594-1603, there were 64 theatrical performances at Court:

The Lord Chamberlain's Men...32

The Admial's Men...................20

other adult companies...............5

boys' companies.......................7.

Compare a total of 299 for a somewhat longer period in the first portion of James' reign, 1603-1616:

The King's Men...................177

Prince Henry's Men...................47

other adult companies..............57

boys' companies.....................18.

The major companies acquired royal patronage: the Lord Chamberlain's Men became the King's Men, and the Admiral's Men became Prince Henry's Men, under the patronage of the King's eldest son. A company of Queen Anne's Men was built out of the pre-existent Pembroke's and Oxford's Men, companies that were largely devoted to touring the provinces in the previous reign. In 1608 a company was organized under the title of the King's second son, the eight-year-old Charles; this company, the Duke of York's men, was called Prince Charles' Men after Prince Henry unexpectedly died in 1612.

Companies continued to form, evolve, and dissolve in the early Jacobean era—the Children of the King's Revels, the Lady Elizabeth's Men; but by the mid-point of James' reign, around the time of Shakespeare's death in 1616, the dramatic scene had generally stabilized into four important companies. These were: the King's Men, at the Globe and Blackfriars Theatres; the Palgrave's Men (formerly the Admiral's and Prince Henry's Men), at the Fortune; Prince Charles' Men, at the Hope; and Queen Anne's Men, at the Red Bull Theatre.

Theatrical evolution continued, sometimes tied to the lives and deaths of royal patrons. Queen Anne's Men disbanded with the death of Anne of Denmark in 1619; the accession of a new queen in 1625 saw the creation of Queen Henrietta's Men. Occasionally there were new companies like Beeston's Boys, and new theatres like the Salisbury Court, and plague closings and political suppressions also came along, without changing the general shape of the actor's companies—until the closing of the theatres in 1642 brought radical change.

References

• E. K. Chambers, The Elizabethan Stage, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1923.
• F. E. Halliday, A Shakespeare Companion 1564-1964, Baltimore, Penguin, 1964.