John Lowin and the English Theatre, 1603-1647 by Wooding Barbara;

Author:Wooding, Barbara;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Acting and Cultural Politics on the Jacobean and Caroline Stage
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Group
Published: 2013-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

Company Administration and Company Shares

On 8 June 1629, Herbert had granted a licence for Massinger’s play, The Picture, printed in quarto the following year with a cast list revealing that Lowin played the part of ‘Eubulus an old Counsaylor’.17 Four King’s Men’s plays were printed in quarto around this time, possibly for the purpose of raising money, though as a number of popular, printed plays continued in performance, it may have been a way of maintaining interest. Alternatively, one or two plays may have been pirated from the company, copied and printed, because in 1637 Philip ordered the Company of Printers and Stationers not to print any plays from any company without written permission, in the case of the King’s Men, from ‘Iohn Lowen and Ioseph Taylor’. That the order supplemented an earlier version is made clear by Pembroke’s reference to ‘my Deare brother & prdecessor’ having received a complaint that plays had been printed without authorization or payment. The document complains about the books’ ‘much corruption to the iniury and disgrace of the Authors’ in similar vein to that made by Heminges and Condell in the Dedication of the First Folio. The order notes further that the Printers and Stationers Company had been ‘advised by my Brother to take notice thereof & to take order for the stay of any further Impression of any of the Playes or Interludes of his Mats servants wthout their consents’ (MSC II iii, pp. 384–5). Since the order is at the complaint of the King’s Men, they must have been the most at risk of, or at the least the most concerned about, pirating.

In 1630, William Herbert died after two years of failing health. Always prepared to use his Parliamentary influence to put pressure on the king, the added power and prestige he hoped for after the removal of Buckingham had eluded him. The same year saw the players, who must have been affected by the loss of their patron of such long standing, profoundly upset by the death of John Heminges, the company manager and the last of the original actor/sharers, leaving only the non-acting Cuthbert Burbage from the original 1599 arrangement. Heminges’s death left administrative responsibility in the hands of Lowin and Taylor, assisted by Eliard Swanston, whose name henceforward frequently appears in the records.18 Heminges’s shares were inherited by his son, a reasonable legacy which would nevertheless threaten the administrative stability of the company.

Towards the end of the year, in February 1630(1), Sir Henry Herbert records receiving a payment from Lowin and Taylor for his winter benefit day. It had become standard practice to devote the proceeds from two performances a year, winter for Blackfriars and summer for the Globe, to Henry Herbert in his capacity of allowing plays for performance. On 25th May 1628 he had noted in his office book:

The Kinges company with a generall consent and alacritye have given mee the benefitt of too dayes in the yeare, the one in summer thother in winter, to be taken out of the second daye of a revived playe, at my owne choyse.

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