Lord Chamberlain's Men

The Lord Chamberlain's Men was a playing company for whom Shakespeare worked for
most of his career. Formed at the end of a period of flux in the theatrical wor
ld of London, it had become, by 1603, one of the two leading companies of the ci
ty and was subsequently patronised by James I. It was founded during the reign o
f Elizabeth I of England in 1594, under the patronage of Henry Carey, 1st Baron
Hunsdon, then the Lord Chamberlain, who was in charge of court entertainments. A
fter its patron's death on 23 July 1596, the company came under the patronage of
his son, George Carey, 2nd Baron Hunsdon, for whom it was briefly known as Lord
Hunsdon's Men until he in turn also became Lord Chamberlain on 17 March 1597, w
hereupon it reverted to its previous name. The company became the King's Men in
1603 when King James ascended the throne and became the company's patron. The co
mpany held exclusive rights to perform Shakespeare's plays.
Contents
1 PlayHouses
2 Personnel
2.1 Later sharers
3 Repertory and performances
4 Controversies
5 Notes
6 References
PlayHouses

The initial form of the Chamberlain's men arose largely from the departure of Ed
ward Alleyn from Lord Strange's Men and the subsequent death of Lord Strange him
self, in the spring of 1594. Yet the ultimate success of the company was largely
determined by the Burbage family. James Burbage was the impresario who assemble
d the company and directed its activities until his death in 1597; his sons Rich
ard and Cuthbert were members of the company, though Cuthbert did not act. This
connection with the Burbages makes the Chamberlain's Men the central link in a c
hain that extends from the beginning of professional theatre (in 1574, James Bur
bage led the first group of actors to be protected under the 1572 statute agains
t rogues and vagabonds) in Renaissance London to its end. (In 1642, the King's M
en were among the acting companies whose lives were ended by Parliament's prohib
ition of the stage.)
The Chamberlain's Men comprised a core of between six and eight "sharers," who s
plit profits and debts; perhaps an equal number of hired men who acted minor and
doubled parts; and a slightly smaller number of boy players, who were sometimes
bound apprentices to an adult actor. The original sharers in the Chamberlain's
were eight. Probably the most famous in the mid-1590s was William Kempe, who had
been in the company of the Earl of Leicester in the 1580s, and had later joined
the King's Men. As the company's clown, he presumably took the broadest comic r
ole in every play; he is identified with Peter in the quarto of Romeo and Juliet
, and probably also originated Dogberry in Much Ado About Nothing and Bottom in
A Midsummer Night's Dream. Kempe has traditionally been viewed as the object of
Hamlet's complaint about extemporising clowns; whether this association is right
or wrong, Kempe had left the company by 1601. Another two sharers from Strange'
s Men had a long-standing association with Kempe. George Bryan had been in Leice
ster's Men in the 1580s, and at Elsinore with Kempe in 1586; because he is not m
entioned in later Chamberlain's or King's Men documents, it is assumed that Brya
n retired from the stage in 1597 or 1598. (Bryan lived on for some years; in the
reign of James, he is listed as a Groom of the Chamber, with household duties,
as late as 1613.) Thomas Pope, another Leicester's veteran, retired in 1600 and
died in 1603. Both Bryan and Pope came to the company from Lord Strange's Men. A
ugustine Phillips also came from Strange's Men. He remained with the troupe unti
l his death in 1605.
Memorial to Tudor actors buried in Shoreditch church including James Burbage and
his sons, Richard Burbage and Cuthbert Burbage, among others.
Two younger actors who came from Strange's, Henry Condell and John Heminges, are
most famous now for collecting and editing the plays of Shakespeare's First Fol
io (1623). Both were relatively young in 1594, and both remained with the compan
y until after the death of King James; their presence provided an element of con
tinuity across decades of changing taste and commercial uncertainty.
(Some scholars have theorised that the company maintained its original eight-sha
rer structure, and that as any man left, through retirement or death, his place
as sharer was filled by someone else. So, Bryan was replaced by William Sly, ca.
1597; Kempe was replaced by Robert Armin, ca. 1599; Pope was replaced by Condel
l, ca. 1600.[1] But this schema, while possible, is not proven by the available
evidence.)
The two sharers who would contribute the most to the Chamberlain's Men did not c
ome from Strange's Men. Shakespeare's activities before 1594 have been a matter
of considerable inquiry; he may have been with Pembroke's Men and Derby's Men in
the early 1590s. As a sharer, he was at first equally important as actor and pl
aywright. At an uncertain but probably early date, his writing became more impor
tant, although he continued to act at least until 1603, when he performed in Ben
Jonson's Sejanus.
No less important was Richard Burbage. He was the lead actor of the Chamberlain'
s Men, who played Hamlet and Othello, and would go on to play King Lear and Macb
eth in the new reign of King James, among many other roles. Though relatively li
ttle-known in 1594, he would become one of the most famous of Renaissance actors
, achieving a fame and wealth exceeded only by Alleyn's.
Among the hired men were some who eventually became sharers. William Sly, who pe
rformed occasionally with the Admiral's Men during the 1590s, acted for the Cham
berlain's by 1598, and perhaps before; he became a sharer after Phillips's death
in 1605. Richard Cowley, identified as Verges by the quarto of Much Ado About N
othing, became a sharer in the King's Men. Nicholas Tooley, at one point apprent
iced to Burbage, stayed with the company until his death in 1623. John Sincler (
or Sincklo) may have specialised in playing thin characters; he seems to have re
mained a hired man. John Duke was a hired man who went to Worcester's Men early
in James's reign.
At least two of the boys had distinguished careers. Alexander Cooke is associate
d with a number of Shakespeare's female characters, while Christopher Beeston we
nt on to become a wealthy impresario in the seventeenth century.
Later sharers
The core members of the company changed in both major and minor ways before Jame
s's accession. The most famous change is that of Will Kempe, the circumstances o
f which remain unclear. Kempe was among the stakeholders in the Globe property,
and he may have performed in that theatre in its first year. His famous morris d
ance to Norwich took place during Lent, when the company lay idle; not until the
hastily-added epilogue to Nine Days' Wonder (his account of the stunt) does he
refer to his plan to return to individual performances. He may have had a hand i
n the bad quartos of Hamlet and The London Prodigal, in which the clown parts ar
e unusually accurate.
Whatever the reason for his departure, Kempe was replaced by Robert Armin, forme
rly of Chandos's Men and an author in his own right. Small and fanciful, Armin o
ffered significantly different options for Shakespeare, and the change is seen i
n the last Elizabethan and first Jacobean plays. Armin is generally credited wit
h originating such characters as Feste in Twelfth Night, Touchstone in As You Li
ke It, and the fool in King Lear.
Thus, by 1603 the core of the troupe was in some respects younger than it had be
en in 1594. Bryan, Pope, and Kempe, veterans of the 1580s, had left, and the rem
aining sharers (with the probable exception of Phillips), were roughly within a
decade of 40.
Repertory and performances
Shakespeare's work undoubtedly formed the great bulk of the company's repertory.
In their first year of performance, they may have staged such of Shakespeare's
older plays as remained in the author's possession, including Henry VI, part 2,
Henry VI, part 3, as well as Titus Andronicus. A Midsummer Night's Dream may hav
e been the first play Shakespeare wrote for the new company; it was followed ove
r the next two years by a concentrated burst of creativity that resulted in Rome
o and Juliet, Love's Labours Lost, The Merchant of Venice, and the plays in the
so-called second tetralogy. The extent and nature of the non-Shakespearean reper
tory in the first is not known; plays such as Locrine, The Troublesome Reign of
King John, and Christopher Marlowe's Edward II have somewhat cautiously been adv
anced as likely candidates. The earliest non-Shakespearean play known to have be
en performed by the company is Ben Jonson's Every Man in His Humour, which was p
roduced in the middle of 1598; they also staged the thematic sequel, Every Man O
ut of His Humour, the next year.
On the strength of these plays, the company quickly rivalled Alleyn's troupe for
preeminence in London; already in 1595, they gave four performances at court, f
ollowed by six the next year and four in 1597. These years were, typically for a
n Elizabethan company, also fraught with uncertainty. The company suffered along
with the others in the summer of 1598, when the uproar over The Isle of Dogs te
mporarily closed the theatres; records from Dover and Bristol indicate that at l
east some of the company toured that summer. The character of Falstaff, though i
mmensely popular from the start, aroused the ire of Lord Cobham, who objected to
the use of the character's original name (Oldcastle), which derived from a memb
er of Cobham's family.
In the last years of the century, the company continued to stage Shakespeare's n
ew plays, including Julius Caesar and Henry V, which may have opened the Globe,
and Hamlet, which may well have appeared first at the Curtain. Among non-Shakesp
earean drama, A Warning for Fair Women was certainly performed, as was the Tudor
history Thomas Lord Cromwell, sometimes seen as a salvo in a theatrical feud wi
th the Admiral's Men, whose lost plays on Wolsey date from the same year.
In 1601, in addition to their tangential involvement with the Essex rebellion, t
he company played a role in a less serious conflict, the so-called War of the Th
eatres. They produced Thomas Dekker's Satiromastix, a satire on Ben Jonson that
seems to have ended the dispute. Somewhat uncharacteristically, Jonson does not
appear to have held a grudge against the company; in 1603, they staged his Sejan
us, with dissatisfying results. They also performed The London Prodigal, The Mer
ry Devil of Edmonton, and The Fair Maid of Bristow, the last a rarity in that it
is a Chamberlain's play that has never been attributed in any part to Shakespea
re.
Controversies
The Lord Chamberlain's Men, and its individual members, largely avoided the scan
dals and turbulence in which other companies and actors sometimes involved thems
elves. Their most serious difficulty with the government came about as a result
of their tangental involvement in the February 1601 insurrection of the Earl of
Essex. Some of Essex's supporters had commissioned a special performance of Shak
espeare's Richard II in the hope that the spectacle of that king's overthrow mig
ht make the public more amenable to the overthrow of Elizabeth (who later remark
ed, "I am Richard II, know ye not that?"). Augustine Phillips was deposed on the
matter by the investigating authorities; he testified that the actors had been
offered 40 shillings more than their usual fee, and for that reason alone had pe
rformed the play on 7 February, the day before Essex's uprising.[2] The explanat
ion was accepted; the company and its members went unpunished, and even performe
d for Elizabeth at Whitehall on 24 February, the day before Essex's execution.
The following year, 1602, saw Christopher Beeston's rape charge. Probably some o
f the Lord Chamberlain's Men were among the actors who accompanied Beeston to hi
s pretrial hearing at Bridewell and caused a disturbance there; but little can b
e said for certain.[3]