widow, Agnes, took with her the bailiff's property, which was considerable, and, settled by the river-bank in Southwark, gave his mind to money-making. He was broker for the sale of wood from Ashdowne Forest, where his father had been Master of the Game, and he now bought property in Southwark for himself. He bought house and land at East Grinstead, land also at Buxted, where his only sister was settled as the wife of an ironfounder. He experimented in the dressing of goatskins and in dye-works, and he sought profit from the new rage for ruffs stiffened with "the devil's liquor," by making starch. He was a money-lender, and he was not above profiting by houses let as stews. He owned the Boar's Head and other inns. He even got--perhaps through his old relations with Lord Montague-small offices at Court, and he was a groom of the Queen's Chamber in 1593. In his parish he was a diligent church-goer, and he lived to become churchwarden. Now, it was clear to Philip Henslowe that he could speculate as well on demand for plays as on demand for starch. It was he, therefore, who in March, 1585, purchased land on Bankside, and afterwards built on it The Rose Theatre, by reconstruction, perhaps, of a smaller play-house that may have stood on the same ground.

The Rose
Theatre.

It is not always easy to distinguish play-places, which were many, from play-houses, which at first were few-to distinguish houses built for other purposes and used by actors, from those built for the sole use of actors and their audiences. But we may take "The Rose," built by Philip Henslowe in 1591, and opened in February, 1592, as the next play-house of importance built after The Theatre and The Curtain. the seventeenth of February, 1592, at the time of the opening of The Rose, Henslowe began to keep an account of his theatre business. It has come down to us, pre

served at Dulwich College.

On

It names the plays Henslowe

caused to be acted; distinguishes by a mark (ne, for "new enterlude") those which were new; it shows at

Henslowe's

what dates he acted them and what money they Diary. brought; it notes also payments and advances

to play-writers, six pounds being the highest price for a new play till the end of the century. Great, therefore, is the value of Henslowe's Diary to students of our early drama.*

Lord

Company of Actors.

The Earl of Leicester died in the Armada year, on the fourth of September, 1588. His company of actors passed into the service of Ferdinando Stanley, Lord Strange, son of Henry Stanley, Earl of Derby. Strange's Since 1504 the Barony of Strange had become merged in the Earldom of Derby, and the title was borne by the heir to the earldom. Ferdinando Stanley, Lord Strange, showed goodwill to the poets and the players. He became Earl of Derby in 1592, and he died without male heir in 1594, leaving as widow the dowager countess for whom Milton wrote his "Arcades." Whether Shakespeare's first employment in London was with the servants of Leicester we do not know, but we may think it likely. Certainly the first company of which he is known to have been a member was that of Lord Strange, which held together from 1588 to 1594. Now, it was Lord Strange's company that first paid rent to Philip Henslowe for the occupation of his Rose Theatre, and Henslowe's Diary shows that this company acted, within the first two years of its occupation, "Mulomorco,”—that is, "The Battle of Alcazar "—fourteen times, "The First Part of Henry VI.-marked as ne-sixteen times between the third of March, 1592, and the end of January, 1593. It acted also "Titus and Vespasian" and plays presently to be

* It was edited by John Payne Collier, for the old Shakespeare Society, but needs re-editing from the original.

spoken of Robert Greene's "Orlando," his "Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay," and his "Looking Glass for London and England"-written with Thomas Lodge-Kyd's "Jeronimo," Marlowe's "Jew of Malta," and Marlowe's "Tragedy of the Guise." With these plays, therefore, Shakespeare was directly familiar, and he must have acted parts in some of them.

When marrying his master's widow, Philip Henslowe took charge of her daughter Joan, and on the fifteenth of October, 1592, Joan Woodward became the wife of Edward Alleyn, the actor, who thereafter worked with her stepfather as partner in theatrical adventure.

Edward Alleyn, about two years and a-half younger than Shakespeare, was born on the first of September, 1566. His father had property in Bishopsgate, and died when his son Edward was four years old.

Edward Alleyn.

dasher.

His widow married again, John Browne, a haberAs a youth, Edward Alleyn joined the players. When his age was twenty he was in the Earl of Worcester's company. A little more than two years later he was joint owner of play-books and other theatrical properties with his elder brother John. Edward Alleyn acquired fame as an actor. Thomas Nash, in 1592, placed his name first in his list of the four best English actors at that date-Alleyn, Tarleton, Knell, and Bentley; "not Roscius," said Nash, "nor Esop, those tragedians admired before Christ was born, could ever perform more in action than famous Ned Alleyn." But Richard Burbage— son of the builder of the first play-house, who had also been trained from his youth as a player-was already outstripping Alleyn as an actor of serious parts, and he was soon to take the first place on the English stage. It was at the age of twenty-six that Alleyn-Ned Alleyn, as he was commonly called-married Henslowe's step-daughter, Joan Woodward.

"The

First Part

of King Henry VI."

In that year, 1592, Alleyn was acting with the Lord Admiral's company in the Newington Butts Theatre, which then belonged to Henslowe, and may have been lately erected by him on the site of an old play-place. Henslowe and Alleyn had also at that time an interest in the old Paris Garden, where plays took their turn with bear-baitings. We pass now to the old play known as the "First Part of King Henry VI.," of unknown authorship, that has been ascribed at will to Marlowe, Greene, Peele, Lodge, one or all, but we do not know which or whether any. Shakespeare touched it; we do not know how or where. The play was first produced at The Rose by Henslowe in its new form on the third of March, 1592. To the great popularity of this play Thomas Nash referred in the same year (1592) in "Pierce Pennilesse his Supplication to the Diuell." Nash there said:"How would it haue ioyed braue Talbot (the terror of the French) to thinke that, after he had laine two hundred yeares in his tombe, he should triumph againe on the stage, and haue his bones new embalmed with the teares of ten thousand spectators at least (at seuerall times), who in the tragedian that represents his person imagine they behold him fresh bleeding." It cannot be proved, but there is no reason for doubting, that the play of which the great success is here referred to was the play in which "braue Talbot," the hero, is the very popular type of a redoubtable Englishman, "the terror of the French," and in which there is a scene showing Talbot's death, with his dead son in his arms, that well acted would move many to tears.

"The First Part of King Henry VI."

is a play complete in itself that might, if it stood alone, be named after its hero, "Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury." Its interest lies in the romance-figure of a steel-clad English warrior, who strikes terror in his enemies, whose name alone puts them to flight. This made

E-VOL. X.