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Lord and Lady Northampton and Queen Henrietta's Men: An Approach to the Castle Ashby Plays

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2009

William D. Wolf
William D. Wolf
Affiliation:
Associate Professor of English, Christopher Newport College, Newport News, Virginia, USA.
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Extract

In 1699, James Wright's Historica Histrionica … In a Dialogue on Plays and Players chronicled the troubles of the London theatrical community after the Civil War, during which it had supported the Royalists almost to a man. Wright's character Trueman, in the spirit of Dryden's and Dennis' spokesmen, tells his compatriot Lovewit that

Afterwards in Oliver's time, they used to act privately, three or four Miles, or more, out of Town, now here, now there, sometimes Noblemens Houses, in particular Holland-house at Kensington, where Nobility and Gentry who met (but in no great Numbers) used to make a Sum for them, each giving a broad Peice, or the like.

Type
Articles
Information
Theatre Research International , Volume 8 , Issue 1 , Spring 1983 , pp. 17 - 22
Copyright
Copyright © International Federation for Theatre Research 1983

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References

Notes

1. Reprinted in Bentley, G. E., The Jacobean and Caroline Stage, 7 Vols. (Oxford, 1941–1968), II, p. 695.Google Scholar

2. See Williams, William P., ‘The Castle Ashby Manuscripts: A Description of the Volumes in Bishop Percy's List’, The Library, ii, 4 (12 1980), 391–412CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kelliher, Hilton, ‘A Hitherto Unrecognized Cavalier Dramatist: James Compton, Third Earl of Northampton’, BLJ, VI, 2 (Autumn 1980), 158–87Google Scholar; Wolf, William D., ‘The Authorship of The Mandrake and King of Cyprus’, The Library, ii, 4 (12 1980), 456–60Google Scholar; and Wolf, , ‘A Very Poetical Corps: Samuel Holland and the Northampton’, ELN, 20 (06 1981).Google Scholar

3. On the basis of paper stocks at Castle Ashby and the discovery of the manuscripts there, Professor Williams, Mr Kelliher, and I had all assumed that the dramas were written and probably performed in Northamptonshire. The present article makes no assumptions about where the plays were written, but demonstrates that London performance and patronage were more likely.

4. Much of the following information about the acting troupes is drawn from Bentley. The biographical and genealogical material comes from the D.N.B., ‘Herbert’ and ‘Sackville’.

5. Anne (Clifford) Herbert, Diary of Anne Clifford (1923), p. 52.Google Scholar

6. William Herbert patronized his kinsmen George Herbert, Jonson, Massinger, and Philip Browne; he knew Harington (whose translation of Vergil was found among the Castle Ashby papers) and Shakespeare.

7. Edward Sackville's son Richard, fifth Earl, was very close to James and Isabella's household. A warm letter from him to his cousin Isabella still survives at Castle Ashby (Family Document 1084/21), and certain facts of his life correspond remarkably to Lord Northampton's. Both of them opposed the Bill of Attainder against Strafford on 21 April 1641. Dorset was elected as F.R.S. on 3 May 1665, almost precisely two years after Northampton. And Samuel Rutter's translation of Corneille's Cid gives some credit for this work to Richard Sackville, who was Rutter's student; Edward Sackville had commanded Rutter to undertake the translation. Later, Northampton began a translation of Corneille's Don Sanche d'Aragon.

8. Kelliher.

9. Hemminges was the son of William Hemminges, who had co-edited the First Folio and dedicated it to William and Philip Herbert. His first play, The Coursing of a Hare, or the Madcapp, was performed by the King's Revels troupe at the Fortune.

10. Information on the house comes from Thornbury, Walter, Old and New London: A Narrative of Its History, Its People, and Its Places, 4 vols. (London, n.d.), Vol. IIGoogle Scholar; Nichols, John, The History and Antiquities of Canonbury-House, at Islington, in the County of Middlesex, in Bibliotheca Topographica Britannia, Vol. II (London, 1780, etc., reprinted Kraus Reprints, 1968)Google Scholar; and Lewis, Samuel, The History and Topography of the Parish of St. Mary, Islington, in the County of Middlesex (London, 1842).Google Scholar I have personally visited both Canonbury House and Compton Wynyates, where I have seen the Drawing Room.

11. Pp. 91–2.

12. Ironically, what is left of Canonbury House has been the home of a repertory group, the Tower Theatre, since 1952.

13. H.S.R. IX, pp. 159, 166.Google Scholar

14. Clifford, Anne, Diary, p. 53.Google Scholar

15. Bentley, , II, p. 470.Google Scholar

16. H.S.R. XIII, p. 92.Google Scholar

17. H.S.R. IX, p. 117.Google Scholar

18. Bentley, , II, p. 525.Google Scholar

19. Turner, Pennecuick, and Grevill did not reside in St. James Clerkenwell; at least they do not appear in the parish records. Their relationship to the Northamptons exists through their dedications and their association with the acting troupe. See Kelliher's section on ‘Northampton and the Players’. Grevill was a member of the King's Revels company at Salisbury Court before the plague of 1636, one of the companies subsidized by the Earl of Dorset.

Yet another of Dorset's players, Henry Gradwell, lived in the parish until 1651, but is associated with Prince Charles's men and therefore the Red Bull. Christopher Goad, a King's man before the 1636 plague and apparently a Queen's man after it, was living in St. James Clerkenwell in 1641, somewhat too early for this study.