Henry Carey's peculiar letter

Shakespeare Quarterly

Volumn 56, Issue 1, 2005, Pages 51-75

  Gurr, Andrew ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 61149390386     PISSN: 00373222     EISSN: 15383555     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/shq.2005.0044     Document Type: Article

References (29)

1. E. K. Chambers, The Elizabethan Stage, 4 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1923), 4:319-20
2. See, for instance, Gary Taylor,"The Fortunes of Oldcastle," Shakespeare Survey 38 (1985): 85-100
3. See Gurr, "Privy Councilors as theatre patrons" in Shakespeare and Theatrical Patronage in Early Modern England
4. Paul Whitfield White and Suzanne R. Westfall, eds. (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2002), 221-45
5. Charles Howard was Lord Chamberlain through 1584 until he became the Lord Admiral, when the chamberlainship passed to Carey, his father-in-law. The term duopoly for the two companies is Richard Dutton's, though he cautiously marks it as not affirmed until 1598 in the Privy Council's surviving orders (Mastering the Revels. The Regulation and Censorship of English Renaissance Drama [Iowa City: U of Iowa P, 1991], 111)
6. I offer a summary of some of the consequences of establishing a duopoly in 1594 in The Shakespeare Company 1594-1642 (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2004), 1-40
7. The letter from Carey to Martin is reprinted in Malone Society Collections: Part I (Oxford: The Malone Society, 1907- ), 1:1, 73-74, hereafter cited as MSC. The Remembrancia were the records kept by the City Remembrancer, who from 1586 to 1605 was Giles Fletcher. Of the nine volumes, Volume 1 covers 1579 to 1592, and Volume 2 covers 1593 to 1609
8. Remembrando, quoted here from MSC, 2:33
9. For an engaging if rather fanciful account of the occasion for these riots, see Richard Wilson, Will Power: Essays on Shakespearean Authority (Detroit: Wayne State UP, 1993), 22-46
10. The thinking behind the Privy Council's drastic order of 28 July 1597 has been much debated (by Glynne Wickham and William Ingram, among others), but nothing conclusive has been found to explain what prompted it. See Glynne Wickham, Early English Stages 1300-1660, 2d ed., 3 vols. in 4 (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul; New York: Columbia UP, 1966-91), Vol. 2 (1576-1660), Pt. 2, 9-29
11. William Ingram, "The Closing of the Theaters in 1597: A Dissenting View," Modern Philology 69 (1971-72): 105-15
12. and Andrew Gurr, The Shakespearian Playing Companies (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), 106-10. Carey was out of the story by then, but Howard was present and signed the order
13. Charles Whitney, "'Usually in the werking Daies': Playgoing Journeymen, Apprentices, and Servants in Guild Records, 1582-92," SQ 50 (1999): 433-58
14. Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, of the Reign of. . . Elizabeth, 1581-90, ed. Robert Lemon and Mary Ann Everett Green, 12 vols. (London: Longman, 1856-72), 2:198-202, hereafter cited as CSPD, Eliz
15. For other information about Spencer and his activities as a businessman, (including his nickname, "Rich Spencer"), see the entry titled "Spencer, Sir John," in the latest edition of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. H.C.G. Matthew and Brian Harrison, 60 vols. (Oxford and New York: Oxford UP, 2004), 51:861-62
16. Acts of the Privy Council of England, New Series, ed. John Roche Dasent, 32 vols. (London: His Majesty's Stationery Office, 1890- ), 28:397-98, 454, 604
17. Charles Whitney, "The Devil His Due; Mayor John Spencer, Elizabethan Civic Antitheatricalism, and The Shoemaker's Holiday"Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England 14 (2001): 168-84
18. Thomas Dekker, The Shoemaker's Holiday, ed. R. L. Smallwood and Stanley Wells (Manchester, UK: Manchester UP; Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1979), 83 (1.1.11-12)
19. CSPD, Eliz. (1598-1600), 5:169. Elizabeth Spencer Comptons first son, born in 1601, was baptized Spencer Compton
20. The Letters of John Chamberlain, ed. Norman Egbert McClure, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: The American Philosophical Society, 1939), 1:67
21. Whitney, "The Devil His Due,"180
22. The wittily self-interested Sir John Harington wrote to Compton in 1610 when Spencer died, recommending that Compton visit Bath to improve his health and bring his inheritance with him (The Letters and Epigrams of Sir John Harington . . ., ed. Norman Egbert McClure [Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 1930], 141-42). Harington lived at Kelston, three miles from Bath
23. The best-known transcription of the papers with a direct bearing on playing in London is in Chambers (Appendix D, "Documents of Control," 4:287-335), but he does not include the names of the signatories at Guildhall. His own versions of the Remembrancia, edited with W. W. Greg for the Malone Society in 1907-11, are more helpful and less modernized in transcription
24. John Chamberlain reported that he was "very neere an hundred yeares old" at his death (Chamberlain, 2:105); in fact he was 84, two years younger than Charles Howard, who outlived him by seven years
25. Ben Jonson, "An Execration upon Vulcan," Works, ed. C. H. Herford and Percy and Evelyn Simpson, 11 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1925-47), 8:208
26. MSC, 1:1, 76. Whitney, "The Devil His Due," 176-77
27. Much of the best information about the plague can be found in F. P. Wilson's The Plague in Shakespeare's London (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1927), 14-16. Wilson's appendix deals with the weekly "bills of mortality" (189-208)
28. Robert Greene, The Second part of Conny-catching (1592), ed. G. B. Harrison (London: The Bodley Head Quartos, 1926), 30
29. The Thirde & Last Part of Conny-catching (1592), ed.. G. B. Harrison (London: The Bodley Head Quartos, 1926), 37