Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

In 1572 the Earl of Leicester's Men asked their patron for a license that would identify them as “your household Servants when we shall have occasion to travayle amongst our frendes as we do usuallye once a yare” (Chambers, 1923, II, 86). The spelling of “travayle” suggests a pun playwrights of the period would have liked: to travel might well be travail, as the actors were at the mercy of the weather and their audiences' generosity, not to mention local authorities who might clap them in jail as vagabonds. The less successful companies might well feel like Sir Oliver Owlett's men in Marston's Histriomastix, who complain that they “travell, with pumps full of gravell … And never can hold together” (Wood, 1939, III, 264). Yet the very fact that an annual tour was the usual practice of Leicester's Men suggests that there must have been rewards for traveling that balanced the hardships. In fact, Leicester's Men continued to tour each year after the Theatre was constructed in 1576 as their London base.In doing so, they were following a tradition of itinerant performing that predated the purpose-built theaters of London by centuries. Visiting minstrels appear in the earliest records that survive from many provincial towns and households: from as early as 1277 at Canterbury, 1307 at Leicester, and 1337 at Worcester. Minstrel troupes visited the dowager Queen Isabella at Hertford Castle ... log in or subscribe to read full text