Change
In 1636 the company had a falling-out of some nature with their founder and manager, and moved to the rival Salisbury Court Theatre. Beeston had a reputation for breaking up theatre companies when it was in his interest to do so, as a way of maintaining control over recalcitrant and unruly actors; Philip Henslowe was accused of similar tactics in the previous generation. The mid-1630s was another difficult period for the theatrical profession, with a long theatre closure due to plague (May 1636 to October 1637). The Queen Henrietta's company split apart during this time; but it was reconstituted in October 1637, with veterans Perkins, Sherlock, Turner, and Sumner, at the Salisbury Court. According to his own testimony, Sir Henry Herbert, the Master of the Revels, was actively involved in rebuilding the Queen Henrietta's company; he apparently had a financial interest in the Salisbury Court Theatre.
(As for other troupe members: Axell, Bird, Fenn, Page, and Stutfield stayed at the Cockpit to join Beeston's Boys, the new group founded by Beeston. Four other members disappear from the scanty records of the later 1630s: Allen, Bowyer, Clark, and Robbins may have travelled with James Shirley to Dublin, and worked at the Werburgh Street Theatre there.)
The rebuilt company retained the queen's name and patronage. On March 6, 1640, Turner collected £80 in the company's name for seven Court performances in 1638 and 1639. The company lasted until the theatres closed in September 1642 at the start of the English Civil War.
Read more about this topic: Queen Henrietta's Men
Famous quotes containing the word change:
“The only thing that one really knows about human nature is that it changes. Change is the one quality we can predicate of it. The systems that fail are those that rely on the permanency of human nature, and not on its growth and development. The error of Louis XIV was that he thought human nature would always be the same. The result of his error was the French Revolution. It was an admirable result.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
“All of childhood’s unanswered questions must finally be passed back to the town and answered there. Heroes and bogey men, values and dislikes, are first encountered and labeled in that early environment. In later years they change faces, places and maybe races, tactics, intensities and goals, but beneath those penetrable masks they wear forever the stocking-capped faces of childhood.”
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“A child... who has learned from fairy stories to believe that what at first seemed a repulsive, threatening figure can magically change into a most helpful friend is ready to believe that a strange child whom he meets and fears may also be changed from a menace into a desirable companion.”
—Bruno Bettelheim (20th century)