Roslyn L. Knutson

Influence of the Repertory System on the Revival and Revision of The Spanish Tragedy and Dr. Faustus

CCORDING to Henslowe’s Diary, the Admiral’s men performed The Spanish Tragedy in 1597 and again in 1601-1602.’ On the A second of these occasions, for which the diary records payments of E2 and some part of El0 to Ben Jonson (pp. 182, 203), and almost certainly on the first as well (p. 55), the company authorized revisions of the playtext.2 Likewise, after having performed Dr. Faustus over a three-year period from September 1594 to the fall of 1597, the Admiral’s men revived the play in 1602 and paid L4 to William Bird and Samuel Rowley for additions (p. 206). The revival of plays was a standard feature of the Elizabethan repertory system. As Henslowe’s diary shows, each year the companies had offerings made up of new plays, plays continued from previous seasons, and revivals. In 1595-1596, for example, the Admiral’s men staged seventeen new plays, carried over fourteen from the 1594-1595 repertory, and revived five.3 What is unusual about the

Shakespeare's Opposites: The Admiral's Company, 1594–1625 (review)

With Shakespeare’s Opposites, Andrew Gurr completes the history of “the duopoly companies” (5), as he has come to call the Chamberlain’s Men and the Admiral’s Men. Complementing The Shakespearian Playing Companies and The Shakespeare Company, 1594–1642, Gurr solidifies and extends the narrative about the playhouse world of the 1590s that he has been constructing for over fifteen years.1 That narrative begins with the claim that Charles Howard, the Lord Admiral, and Henry Carey, the Lord Chamberlain, used their positions on the Privy Council to craft a pair of companies to which they assigned players, a repertory, and a playhouse (allegedly, an intentional by-product of the plan was to make illegitimate other theatrical activity). Recently, Gurr has added the Lord Mayor of London and Edmund Tilney to the consortium of officials who were supporters. Having set the duopoly in place, Gurr turns to an analysis of the Admiral’s Men’s personality as a company, which he differentiates from that of Shakespeare’s company by management and repertory. In his view, the business of the Admiral’s Men was marked by the rise of Edward Alleyn and Philip Henslowe, the latter to the status of impresario, whereas the Chamberlain’s Men were team players. Gurr sees the repertory of the two companies as also different. He argues that, in response to the duopoly, the Admiral’s Men developed the disguise play as their signature offering, a choice the Chamberlain’s Men apparently “ignored almost completely” (1). He argues further that after 1600 the Admiral’s Men, who became the Prince’s Men, relied on “old favourites” by Kyd and Marlowe that “catered chiefly for the mass ‘citizen’ playgoers at the cheaper outdoor playhouses” (169, 4), whereas the Chamberlain’s Men, when they became the King’s Men, developed a fresh and fashionable repertory suited to elite audiences at Blackfriars. Gurr does not begin the history of the Admiral’s company in 1576, although he once claimed that “there is enough continuity of player membership and other kinds of cohesion” to date the Admiral’s Men from 1576 to 1625.2 Rather, he begins in 1594 with the installation of the alleged duopoly: “For six years from May 1594 the English government gave two acting companies the exclusive right to entertain Londoners” (1). Readers familiar with Gurr’s arguments will notice a more explicit emphasis on an effect of this power sharing, namely, that the Admiral’s Men had “exclusive access” to London playgoers, whose “choice [was] restricted to one of the