After appearing at Newington Butts the Lord Chamberlain’s Men toured parts of the country, including Wiltshire and Berkshire, before returning to London for the winter season. On 8 October Lord Hunsdon, their patron, wrote to the Lord Mayor requesting him to allow his servants to play in the City; his new company were already at the Cross Keys in Gracechurch Street, and he wished to prolong their engagement. It is curious that they were not using the Theatre or the Curtain, but it is likely either that the playhouses were in a state of disrepair or that they were not considered suitable venues for the darker winter season. Hunsdon promised that they would begin at two in the afternoon rather than at four, and that they would use no drums or trumpets to advertise their presence. The Lord Mayor and his colleagues gave way to the Lord Chamberlain’s wishes, but this was the last time that any playing company ever used a city inn. The Lord Chamberlain’s Men also performed at court this winter, and played on two occasions before Elizabeth; on 26 and 28 December they attended her at her palace in Greenwich.
The actors did not simply arrive, with their costumes and instruments. They first had to rehearse the plays intended for Her Majesty’s pleasure before the Master of the Revels, Edmund Tilney. His suite of apartments and offices was in the former Hospital of St. John in Clerkenwell; by one of those strange coincidences of London life, Clerkenwell had once been the site of the London mystery plays. Since the company performed at the playhouses during the afternoon, these royal rehearsals must have taken place early in the morning or late at night. The chandler’s bill for the Office of the Revels records large payments for candles, coal and firewood. Tilney would act as censor, removing those lines that might be indelicate or offensive to the royal ear. He also loaned the company more sumptuous costumes if they were needed; at the court, some of their dresses and cloaks might have seemed threadbare. There are references to the actors borrowing “the monarch’s gown,” to save embarrassment before the great original, and “armor for knightly combatants” in case they were ridiculed by the more martial courtiers. The Master of the Revels also lent them “apt houses made of canvas,”“necessaries for hunters” and “a device for thunder and lightning.”1
When all was settled they took a boat downriver from one of the London wharves or “stairs,” with an attendant barge for their costumes and devices. The great hall at Greenwich had been cleared for the performance; the stage was at one end, decked out with perspective scenery devised by the Office of the Revels, and the royal dais was at the other. The hall, on this later winter afternoon and evening, was illuminated by candles and torches. The musicians were placed on the wooden balcony above the stage, and the actors could use the passage behind the screen as their “tiring-room.” The audience, invited at royal discretion, assembled in their formal robes before the arrival of the queen herself. It was the most fashionable entertainment of the year, and it would have been natural for Shakespeare and his fellows to experience a little nervousness. The names of the plays they performed on this occasion are not recorded, but it has been suggested that the queen witnessed Love’s Labour’s Lost as well as Romeo and Juliet. What better fillip for an ageing queen than tales of young lovers?
The Lord Chamberlain’s Men were a success, and became something of a royal favourite. The extant records show that on this first occasion the Lord Admiral’s Men performed three times, and the Lord Chamberlain’s Men played twice, but in later years the Lord Chamberlain’s Men were called more often. In the winter season of 1596 and 1597, for example, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men played six times and the Lord Admiral’s Men did not appear at all. A reference to William Shakespeare occurs in the payment for the royal entertainment at Greenwich in 1594, when £20 was granted to “William Kemp, William Shakespeare and Richard Burbage” for “two comedies showed before Her Majesty in Christmas time last.” It is an indication of Shakespeare’s seniority in the company that he should be listed before the principal actor — unless, of course, he was the principal actor. It suggests in any case that he was a leading member at the time of its inception, and already active in the company’s business. The entry in the treasurer’s account has the distinction of being the only official reference to Shakespeare’s connection with the stage.
On the night of the last day they performed at Greenwich, 28 December 1594, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men also gave a performance of The Comedy of Errors in the hall of Gray’s Inn. The play was part of the Christmas revels of that Inn, presided over by a lord of misrule known as “the Prince of Purpoole.” Shakespeare may have been chosen as the dramatist through his association with Southampton; Southampton was a member of Gray’s Inn. The play of twins and of mistaken identity, with all the complications of evidence involved, was naturally popular among students of the English law. For the purposes of the Inn, Shakespeare also revised The Comedy of Errors. He introduced more legalisms and two trial scenes. A special stage had been built for the production, as well as “Scaffolds to be reared to the top of the House, to increase Expectation.” So there was to be an element of spectacle in the proceedings. But the play hardly received a fair hearing. The numbers of invited guests were so large, and the event so badly managed, that the entertainments had to be curtailed. The senior members of the Inner Temple, who had been invited by their colleagues, left the hall “discontented and displeased”; spectators then invaded the stage to the obvious detriment of the players. A report in Gesta Grayorum concludes that “that Night was begun, and continued to the end, in nothing but Confusion and Errors; whereupon it was ever afterwards called, The Night of Errors”. Two days later the members held a “mock trial,” one of the enduring features of the Inns, at which “a Company of base and common Fellows” from “Shoreditch” was berated for making up “our Disorders with a Play of Errors and Confusions.”2 It was not a serious rebuke, and the allusion to the “base and common” actors is an arch legal joke. The person blamed for the fiasco was in fact a member and “orator” of the Inn, Francis Bacon, a keen spectator of the drama and a writer sometimes deemed to have composed Shakespeare’s plays himself. The contemporaneity of the two men has itself led to “nothing but confusion and errors.” Shakespeare has been accused of writing Bacon, and Bacon accused of writing Shakespeare, while a third party has been held responsible for the productions of both men.