The Earl of Worcester's Men was an acting company in Renaissance England. An early formation of the company, wearing the livery of William Somerset, 3rd Earl of Worcester, is among the companies known to have toured the country in the mid-sixteenth century. A later iteration of the company toured through the 1580s and '90s; little is known about its activities, though in 1583 it included the sixteen-year-old Edward Alleyn, at the start of his illustrious career. [1]
By the start of the seventeenth century, Edward Somerset, 4th Earl of Worcester was moving up into the higher levels of the late-Elizabethan social and political structure; in April 1601 he became the Queen's Master of the Horse. [2] It was to add to his prestige that Worcester wanted to bring his players to London. Through the 1590s, only two companies of adult players, the Lord Chamberlain's Men and the Admiral's Men, had been officially allowed in London. Worcester was able to make his company the third, with a license of the Privy Council as of 31 March 1602. The company was initially supposed to play only at the Boar's Head Inn; but by August of that year they were negotiating with Philip Henslowe. Soon they were playing at his Rose Theatre, which the Admiral's Men had vacated when they moved to the Fortune in 1600. (Henslowe did business with the members of Worcester's Men as he had with the Admiral's: many company members were soon in debt to him for small loans.)
During their first year with Henslowe, [3] Worcester's Men purchased a dozen plays from Henslowe's stable of regular house dramatists: Thomas Dekker, Wentworth Smith, John Day, Henry Chettle, Richard Hathwaye, and even a young John Webster. Most have not survived. The fee for a play was normally £6, sometimes a pound or two higher; Dekker got an extra 10 shillings for one of his solo works. [4]
In this incarnation, Worcester's Men included, at one time or another, John Lowin, actor/playwright Thomas Heywood and the famous clown Will Kempe. Christopher Beeston joined Worcester's Men in August 1602, after leaving the Lord Chamberlain's Men; another player from that company, John Duke, made the same move sometime in 1602. And in the latter part of that year Worcester's absorbed Oxford's Men, another company that had previously been active mostly as a touring troupe. In February 1603 they played A Woman Killed with Kindness, often called Heywood's best play.
The troupe did not achieve a degree of success equal to that of the Lord Chamberlain's Men at the Globe or the Admiral's Men at the new Fortune; yet early in the reign of James I, the company received royal patronage and became Queen Anne's Men.
English Renaissance theatre, also known as Renaissance English theatre and Elizabethan theatre, refers to the theatre of England between 1558 and 1642.
Thomas Dekker was an English Elizabethan dramatist and pamphleteer, a versatile and prolific writer, whose career spanned several decades and brought him into contact with many of the period's most famous dramatists.
Philip Henslowe was an Elizabethan theatrical entrepreneur and impresario. Henslowe's modern reputation rests on the survival of his diary, a primary source for information about the theatrical world of Renaissance London.
The Rose was an Elizabethan theatre. It was the fourth of the public theatres to be built, after The Theatre (1576), the Curtain (1577), and the theatre at Newington Butts – and the first of several playhouses to be situated in Bankside, Southwark, in a liberty outside the jurisdiction of the City of London's civic authorities. Its remains were excavated by archaeologists in 1989 and are listed by Historic England as a Scheduled Monument.
Henry Chettle was an English dramatist and miscellaneous writer of the Elizabethan era, best known for his pamphleteering.
The Lord Chamberlain's Men was a company of actors, or a "playing company", for which Shakespeare wrote during most of his career. Richard Burbage played most of the lead roles, including Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth. Formed at the end of a period of flux in the theatrical world of London, it had become, by 1603, one of the two leading companies of the city and was subsequently patronized by James I.
In Renaissance-era London, playing company was the usual term for a company of actors. These companies were organised around a group of ten or so shareholders, 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. The major companies were based at specific theatres in London; the most successful of them, William Shakespeare's company the King's Men, had the open-air Globe Theatre for summer seasons and the enclosed Blackfriars Theatre in the winters. The Admiral's Men occupied the Rose Theatre in the 1590s, and the Fortune Theatre in the early 17th century.
Queen Anne's Men was a playing company, or troupe of actors, in Jacobean era London. In their own era they were known colloquially as the Queen's Men — as were Queen Elizabeth's Men and Queen Henrietta's Men, in theirs.
Richard Hathwaye, was an English dramatist.
Wentworth Smith, was a minor English dramatist of the Elizabethan period who may have been responsible for some of the plays in the Shakespeare Apocrypha, though no work known to be his is extant.
The Admiral's Men was a playing company or troupe of actors in the Elizabethan and Stuart eras. It is generally considered the second most important acting troupe of English Renaissance theatre.
Christopher Beeston was a successful actor and a powerful theatrical impresario in early 17th century London. He was associated with a number of playwrights, particularly Thomas Heywood.
The Earl of Pembroke's Men was an Elizabethan era playing company, or troupe of actors, in English Renaissance theatre. They functioned under the patronage of Henry Herbert, 2nd Earl of Pembroke. Early and equivocal mentions of a Pembroke's company reach as far back as 1575; but the company is known for certain to have been in existence in 1592. In that year, a share in the company was valued at £80.
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.
William Sly was an actor in English Renaissance theatre, a colleague of William Shakespeare and Richard Burbage in the Lord Chamberlain's Men and the King's Men.
Queen Elizabeth's Men was a playing company or troupe of actors in English Renaissance theatre. Formed in 1583 at the express command of Queen Elizabeth, it was the dominant acting company for the rest of the 1580s, as the Admiral's Men and the Lord Chamberlain's Men would be in the decade that followed.
The Earl of Sussex's Men was a playing company or troupe of actors in Elizabethan and Jacobean England, most notable for their connection with the early career of William Shakespeare.
In the historical era of English Renaissance drama, an Inn-yard theatre or Inn-theatre was a common inn with an inner courtyard with balconies that provided a venue for the presentation of stage plays.
Edward IV, Parts 1 and 2 is a two-part Elizabethan history play centring on the personal life of King Edward IV of England. It was published without an author's name attached, but is often attributed to Thomas Heywood, perhaps writing with collaborators.
The Downfall of Robert Earl of Huntingdon and The Death of Robert Earl of Huntingdon are two closely related Elizabethan-era stage plays on the Robin Hood legend, that were written by Anthony Munday in 1598 and published in 1601. They are among the relatively few surviving examples of the popular drama acted by the Admiral's Men during the Shakespearean era.