The Politics of Patronage: Dramatic Records in Robert Dudley’s Household Books

Abstract

HE ACTING TROUPE OF ROBERT DUDLEY, EARL OF LEICESTER, was one of the most prominent of its time, receiving a royal patent in 1574 to act in London and anywhere else in England without restriction.' Two years after the patent was granted, one of its members, James Burbage, established a base for the company on the outskirts of London at the first public playhouse, called-appropriately enough-the Theatre.2 As one of the premier Elizabethan companies, Leicester's Men have received their fair share of attention in published theater histories. Both E. K. Chambers and J. T. Murray have documented the troupe's provincial travels and court appearances, while T. W. Baldwin uses them as a basis for his discussion in The Organization and Personnel of the Shakespearean Company.3 However, no one has yet made a full search of all surviving Dudley family papers for information about the patron's relationship with his players and with other performers.4 My own interest in Leicester's Men derives from my chance discovery in 1986 of a long-forgotten Dudley household-account book preserved by the Evelyns, a family of local importance in the county of Surrey. The book covers the period 2 October 1584 to 30 June 1586 and forms part of a collection of Elizabethan state papers that once belonged to the seventeenth-century diarist John Evelyn. In Evelyn's own words, writing to William Wotton in 1703: