The Earl of Oxford’s Men, alternatively Oxford’s Players, were acting companies in late Medieval and Renaissance England patronised by the Earls of Oxford. The name was also sometimes used to refer to tumblers, musicians, and animal acts that were under the patronage of the Earls or hired by them. The most notable troupe of this name was the acting company of the Elizabethan era patronised by Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford (1550-1604), that originally derived from an earlier company, the Earl of Warwick’s Men, and was active from 1580 to 1587. It was revived probably in the late 1590s and ultimately was absorbed by yet another troupe, Worcester's Men, in late 1602.
England in the Middle Ages concerns the history of England during the medieval period, from the end of the 5th century through to the start of the Early Modern period in 1485. When England emerged from the collapse of the Roman Empire, the economy was in tatters and many of the towns abandoned. After several centuries of Germanic immigration, new identities and cultures began to emerge, developing into kingdoms that competed for power. A rich artistic culture flourished under the Anglo-Saxons, producing epic poems such as Beowulf and sophisticated metalwork. The Anglo-Saxons converted to Christianity in the 7th century and a network of monasteries and convents was built across England. In the 8th and 9th centuries England faced fierce Viking attacks, and the fighting lasted for many decades, eventually establishing Wessex as the most powerful kingdom and promoting the growth of an English identity. Despite repeated crises of succession and a Danish seizure of power at the start of the 11th century it can also be argued that by the 1060s England was a powerful, centralised state with a strong military and successful economy.
The English Renaissance was a cultural and artistic movement in England dating from the late 15th century to the early 17th century. It is associated with the pan-European Renaissance that is usually regarded as beginning in Italy in the late 14th century. As in most of the rest of northern Europe, England saw little of these developments until more than a century later. The beginning of the English Renaissance is often taken, as a convenience, to be 1485, when the Battle of Bosworth Field ended the Wars of the Roses and inaugurated the Tudor Dynasty. Renaissance style and ideas, however, were slow to penetrate England, and the Elizabethan era in the second half of the 16th century is usually regarded as the height of the English Renaissance.
The Elizabethan era is the epoch in the Tudor period of the history of England during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I (1558–1603). Historians often depict it as the golden age in English history. The symbol of Britannia was first used in 1572, and often thereafter, to mark the Elizabethan age as a renaissance that inspired national pride through classical ideals, international expansion, and naval triumph over Spain. The historian John Guy (1988) argues that "England was economically healthier, more expansive, and more optimistic under the Tudors" than at any time in a thousand years.
John de Vere, 15th Earl of Oxford, patronised not only a playing company but playwright John Bale. Engraving after funerary monument, National Portrait Gallery, London.
The Earl of Oxford’s Entertainers, a troupe patronised by John de Vere, 7th Earl of Oxford (1312 – 1360), was paid 6 shillings, 8 pence for a performance in Canterbury, Kent, on 29 September 1353 or 1354, the earliest record for an Oxford company.[1] Records exist for 57 provincial performances of various animal acts, minstrels, musicians, and tumblers, including five performances by two playing companies, sponsored by the 13th earl (1442 – 1513) from 1565 to 1513,[2] as well as two performances at the court of Henry VII.[3] The 14th Earl (1499 – 1526) patronised animal acts and a minstrel company.[4]
John de Vere, 7th Earl of Oxford was the nephew and heir of Robert de Vere, 6th Earl of Oxford who succeeded as Earl of Oxford in 1331, after his uncle died without issue.
Canterbury is a historic English cathedral city and UNESCO World Heritage Site, situated in the heart of the City of Canterbury, a local government district of Kent, England. It lies on the River Stour.
Kent is a county in South East England and one of the home counties. It borders Greater London to the north-west, Surrey to the west and East Sussex to the south-west. The county also shares borders with Essex along the estuary of the River Thames, and with the French department of Pas-de-Calais through the Channel Tunnel. The county town is Maidstone.
John de Vere, 15th Earl of Oxford, Lord Great Chamberlain KGPC was an English peer and courtier.
John Bale was an English churchman, historian and controversialist, and Bishop of Ossory. He wrote the oldest known historical verse drama in English, and developed and published a very extensive list of the works of British authors down to his own time, just as the monastic libraries were being dispersed. His unhappy disposition and habit of quarrelling earned him the nickname "bilious Bale".
John de Vere, 16th Earl of Oxford (1516 – 1562), maintained a playing company that toured the provinces and also played in London, most famously a performance in Southwark on 5 February 1547 at the same time of a dirge for Henry VIII a week after his death, despite the earl serving as one of the twelve chief mourners for the deceased monarch.[8] Records for 25 separate provincial performances survive,[9] and the troupe continued until two years after the earl's death.[10]
John de Vere, 16th Earl of Oxford was born to John de Vere, 15th Earl of Oxford and Elizabeth Trussell, daughter of Edward Trussell. He was styled Lord Bolebec 1526 to 1540 before he succeeded to his father's title.
Southwark is a district of Central London and is the north-west of the London Borough of Southwark. Centred 11⁄2 miles (2.4 km) east of Charing Cross, it fronts the River Thames and the City of London to the north. It was at the lowest bridging point of the Thames in Roman Britain, providing a crossing from Londinium, and for centuries had the only Thames bridge in the area, until a bridge was built upstream more than 10 miles (16 km) to the west. It was a 1295-enfranchised Borough in the county of Surrey, apparently created a burh in 886, containing various parishes by the high medieval period, lightly succombing to City attempts to constrain its free trade and entertainment. Its entertainment district, in its heyday at the time of Shakespare's Globe Theatre has revived in the form of the Southbank which overspills imperceptibly into the ancient boundaries of Lambeth and commences at the post-1997 reinvention of the original theatre, Shakespeare's Globe, incorporating other smaller theatre spaces, an exhibition about Shakespeare's life and work and which neighbours Vinopolis and the London Dungeon. After the 18th century decline of Southwark's small wharves, the borough rapidly grew in population and saw the growth of great docks, printing/paper, railways, goods yards, small artesan and other often low-wage industries and Southwark was among many such inner districts to see slum clearance and replacement largely with social housing during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It is now at an advanced stage of regeneration and has the City Hall offices of the Greater London Authority. At its heart is the area known as Borough, which has an eclectic covered and semi-covered market and numerous food and drink venues as well as the skyscraper The Shard. Another landmark is Southwark Cathedral, a priory then parish church created a cathedral in 1905, noted for its Merbecke Choir.
Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford
Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, was the patron of several theatrical companies. Unknown artist after lost original, 1575; National Portrait Gallery, London.
Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford (1550-1604), was an enthusiastic and persistent promoter of theatrical companies, and was himself known as a playwright.[11] He sponsored both adult and boys' acting companies, and it is difficult to distinguish between their performance records.[12] He also sponsored a Christmas 1584 court performance of tumbler John Symons and his group of acrobats between his tenure with Lord Strange's Men and Queen Elizabeth's Men.[13]
Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford was an English peer and courtier of the Elizabethan era. Oxford was heir to the second oldest earldom in the kingdom, a court favourite for a time, a sought-after patron of the arts, and noted by his contemporaries as a lyric poet and court playwright, but his reckless and volatile temperament precluded him from attaining any courtly or governmental responsibility and contributed to the dissipation of his estate. Since the 1920s he has been among the most popular alternative candidates proposed for the authorship of Shakespeare's works.
Acrobatics is the performance of extraordinary human feats of balance, agility, and motor coordination. It can be found in many of the performing arts, sporting events, and martial arts. Acrobatics is most often associated with activities that make extensive use of gymnastic elements, such as acro dance, circus, and gymnastics, but many other athletic activities — such as ballet and diving — may also employ acrobatics. Although acrobatics is most commonly associated with human body performance, it may also apply to other types of performance, such as aerobatics.
Lord Strange's Men was an Elizabethan playing company, comprising retainers of the household of Ferdinando Stanley, Lord Strange. They are best known in their final phase of activity in the late 1580s and early 1590s. After 25 September 1593, they were known as the Earl of Derby's Men, that being the date of Stanley's accession to his father's title.
Oxford’s adult playing company was formed with actors who were formerly members of the Earl of Warwick’s Men in the early 1580s during the period when noblemen were using their playing companies to promote themselves at court by competing to furnish court entertainments.[14] The original members included the well-known actor brothers John and Laurence Dutton, Robert Leveson, Thomas Chesson, and possibly Jerome Savage and Richard Tarlton.[15] The formation of the troupe by the desertion of the Duttons caused court gossip and served as the occasion of an excoriating poem by an unknown court poet in the tradition of scatological court flyting.[16]
Richard Tarlton or Tarleton, was an English actor of the Elizabethan era. He was the most famous clown of his era, known for his extempore comic doggerel verse, which came to be known as "Tarltons". He helped to turn Elizabethan theatre into a form of mass entertainment paving the way for the Shakespearean stage. After his death many witticisms and pranks were attributed to him and were published as Tarlton's Jests.
Flyting or fliting is a contest consisting of the exchange of insults, often conducted in verse, between two parties.
Oxford's players almost immediately got involved in a brawl with some Inns of Court students while playing at The Theatre in Shoreditch, and several members were thrown into gaol, but they were out and on the road by early June. De Vere solicited letters of recommendation for his players from his father-in-law, Lord Burghley, and the Lord Chamberlain, the Earl of Sussex, addressed to the vice-chancellor of Cambridge University. Burghley's letter is dated 9 June 1580:
Where the bearers hereof servauntes to the Right honorable my very good Lord the Erle of Oxford are desierous to repaire to that universitie and there to make shewe of such playes and enterludes as have bene by them heretofore played by them publykely, aswell before the Queens majestie as in the Citie of London, and intend to spend iiij or v. daies there in Cambridg as heretofore they have accustomed to do with other matters and arguments of late yeres, and because they might the rather be permitted so to do without empeachment or lett of yow the vicechauncelor or other the heades of howses, have desired my lettre unto yow in their favor.
No record exists of Oxford's players entertaining the court before 1583, so Burghley's claim that they had done so by 1580 is taken by Andrew Gurr as promotional hyperbole. Of course, court records of the time are unreliable. In any case, the vice-chancellor refused permission to play with the excuse that the plague was still feared and that commencement was at hand, and gave them 20 shillings towards their expenses.[17]
The Weakest Goeth to the Wall (1600), a play probably written by Thomas Dekker in the late 1590s, was in the 17th Earl of Oxford's Players' repertoire.
The company supported itself touring the provinces in what appears to be a regular circuit that wound across England, ranging from Gloucestershire to Kent up to East Anglia, including towns in the Midlands.[18] While Oxford's biographer Alan Nelson calls Oxford's troupe "one of the four principal companies of London" based it being mentioned in a 1587 letter complaining about stage plays,[19] Gurr, a specialist in English Renaissance theatre, notes that no evidence exists that the company appeared regularly in London after 1580.[20] John Dutton was drafted into the Queen's Men and left the company in 1583.
↑ Gurr, Andrew. The Shakespearian Playing Companies (1996) Oxford UP, pp. 306-7.
↑ Maclean, Sally-Beth. "Adult Playing Companies 1583-1593" in The Oxford Handbook of Early Modern Theatre, Richard Dutton, ed. (2009) Oxford UP, pp. 39-55, 49.
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