unfortunate incident or series of incidents leading to the arrest of the cast. Burbage and his actors had been hired to provide an entertainment for the law students at the Inns of Court. There are no details as to what actually took place after the performance, only that it resulted in a court case ‘due to the great disorders and abuses done and committed during the evening by a company of base common fellows under the leadership of a sorcerer or conjuror’. 2
The plot, taken from the Roman author Plautus, concerns two sets of twins, each pair consisting of a master and his servant, who were parted shortly after their births. The master and servant of one pair find themselves in Ephesus where their counterparts have been living since they were children, with genuinely funny and confusing results. Adriana, the wife of the Ephesus twin, having taken the ‘wrong’ twin back home assuming it is her husband (and possibly spending the afternoon in bed with him) then finds his behaviour so inexplicable that she decides he must be mad and sends for a ‘conjuror’ to cast out his devils. Presumably it was the actor playing this part who was accused of causing mayhem. Whoever he was, he defended himself and his fellow-actors so well, accusing the attorney and solicitor who brought them to court of ‘knavery and juggling’ in presenting their case, that it was promptly dismissed. 3
Commenting on the incident, one Henry Helmus noted that as an evening out the entertainment ‘was not thought to offer much of account, save Dancing and Revelling with Gentlewomen and after such Sports a
Comedy of Errors
, like to Plautus his
Menechmus
, was played by the Players. So that the night was begun, and continued to the end, in nothing but confusion and errors, whereupon it was ever afterwards known as the Night of Errors.’ He then adds: ‘Gray’s Inn Hall, Innocents Day, December 28 1594. There was such a row and such crowding by gentlewomen and others on the stage, that the Temple visitors to Gray’s Inn went away disgusted. And so the Gray’s Inn Men had only Dancing and Shakespeare’s Play.’
The Shrew
needs little or no explanation and was likely based on an older, existing drama on the same subject;
Titus Andronicus
is a blood-stained tale of murder and rape which culminates with children being eaten in a pie, while
Two Gentlemen
is a gentle comedy which introduces one of Shakespeare’s favourite themes where a boy player, dressed as a girl, disguises him/herself as a boy. As for
Richard III
, after
Spanish Tragedy
, it remained the most popular play in repertoire through until the end of the decade and no fewer than six editions of it were published in Shakespeare’s lifetime. It offered the audience everything: a supposedly machiavellian villain who takes the audience into his confidence from the start, love (or lust) with the widow across the coffin of her husband whom he has only recently killed, executions and murders galore, hauntings by ghosts and an all-out battle scene at the end in which the protagonist almost redeems himself by his outstanding courage. For Elizabethans it was important to have ‘a good death’.
This play too acquired a mythology of its own, including the famous tale which appears in the
Diary
of John Manningham, a student at the Middle Temple, in the year 1602:
Upon a time when Burbage played Richard III there was a female citizen grew so far in liking with him, that before she went from the play she appointed him to come that night unto her by the name Richard III. Shakespeare, overhearing their conclusion, went before, was entertained, and at his game ere Burbage came. The message being brought that Richard III was at the door, Shakespeare caused the return to be made that William the Conqueror was before Richard III. 4
True or not it gives a good idea of what actors and dramatists were up to when the opportunity arose.
Another reason for the change in the climate of the times, which
The plot, taken from the Roman author Plautus, concerns two sets of twins, each pair consisting of a master and his servant, who were parted shortly after their births. The master and servant of one pair find themselves in Ephesus where their counterparts have been living since they were children, with genuinely funny and confusing results. Adriana, the wife of the Ephesus twin, having taken the ‘wrong’ twin back home assuming it is her husband (and possibly spending the afternoon in bed with him) then finds his behaviour so inexplicable that she decides he must be mad and sends for a ‘conjuror’ to cast out his devils. Presumably it was the actor playing this part who was accused of causing mayhem. Whoever he was, he defended himself and his fellow-actors so well, accusing the attorney and solicitor who brought them to court of ‘knavery and juggling’ in presenting their case, that it was promptly dismissed. 3
Commenting on the incident, one Henry Helmus noted that as an evening out the entertainment ‘was not thought to offer much of account, save Dancing and Revelling with Gentlewomen and after such Sports a
Comedy of Errors
, like to Plautus his
Menechmus
, was played by the Players. So that the night was begun, and continued to the end, in nothing but confusion and errors, whereupon it was ever afterwards known as the Night of Errors.’ He then adds: ‘Gray’s Inn Hall, Innocents Day, December 28 1594. There was such a row and such crowding by gentlewomen and others on the stage, that the Temple visitors to Gray’s Inn went away disgusted. And so the Gray’s Inn Men had only Dancing and Shakespeare’s Play.’
The Shrew
needs little or no explanation and was likely based on an older, existing drama on the same subject;
Titus Andronicus
is a blood-stained tale of murder and rape which culminates with children being eaten in a pie, while
Two Gentlemen
is a gentle comedy which introduces one of Shakespeare’s favourite themes where a boy player, dressed as a girl, disguises him/herself as a boy. As for
Richard III
, after
Spanish Tragedy
, it remained the most popular play in repertoire through until the end of the decade and no fewer than six editions of it were published in Shakespeare’s lifetime. It offered the audience everything: a supposedly machiavellian villain who takes the audience into his confidence from the start, love (or lust) with the widow across the coffin of her husband whom he has only recently killed, executions and murders galore, hauntings by ghosts and an all-out battle scene at the end in which the protagonist almost redeems himself by his outstanding courage. For Elizabethans it was important to have ‘a good death’.
This play too acquired a mythology of its own, including the famous tale which appears in the
Diary
of John Manningham, a student at the Middle Temple, in the year 1602:
Upon a time when Burbage played Richard III there was a female citizen grew so far in liking with him, that before she went from the play she appointed him to come that night unto her by the name Richard III. Shakespeare, overhearing their conclusion, went before, was entertained, and at his game ere Burbage came. The message being brought that Richard III was at the door, Shakespeare caused the return to be made that William the Conqueror was before Richard III. 4
True or not it gives a good idea of what actors and dramatists were up to when the opportunity arose.
Another reason for the change in the climate of the times, which
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