A wealthy host attracts Shakespeare's actors to Yorkshire

By Dr Siobhan Keenan - Reader in Shakespeare and Renaissance Literature at De Montfort University, Leicester

Just a few years after Shakespeare’s death his company, the King’s Men, continued to perform – arriving at the home of a wealthy Yorkshire Earl famous for being a congenial host.

Image courtesy of Skipton Castle

Shakespeare’s company, the King’s Men, visited Londesborough Hall (the home of Sir Francis Clifford, 4th Earl of Cumberland) several times in the years shortly after Shakespeare’s death.

The first recorded visit in the family’s household accounts dates from 1619-20. On this occasion, the players stayed at Sir Francis’s house for two nights and were paid £5 for performing five plays.

Dr Siobhan Keenan

The family’s pantry accounts reveal that they were also allowed three dinners and two suppers during their visit – such meals presumably being one of the perks of visiting country houses on tour!

The visits of the King’s Men post-date Shakespeare’s career with the company, but there is a good chance that their touring repertory included the plays of the company’s most famous playwright, and that Sir Francis and his guests had a chance to see a performance of one or more of Shakespeare plays in the great hall at Londesborough.

The company certainly continued to perform Shakespeare’s plays at court in the 1620s and 1630s.

The King’s Men returned to Londesborough in 1624-25 and 1628-29, although the household accounts suggest that the visit in 1624-25 may not have been by the official royal company. The entry records a payment of £3 for performances of three plays to ‘a Companie of Players goeing by the name of the kinges Players’, the ambiguous phrasing suggesting that the visitors might not have been who they claimed to be!

Unlicensed acting companies touring under false royal names and forged licences were a problem in the early seventeenth century, so it’s possible that the troupe that visited Londesborough in 1624-5 was not actually Shakespeare’s one-time company, but rather a group of opportunists masquerading under the royal troupe’s name and perhaps using some of its plays. Either way, the Cliffords do not seem to have been overly fussy and the players must have been reasonably good, given that they were welcomed for three performances and rewarded in similarly generous fashion as in 1619-20.

The King’s Men was the acting company in which Shakespeare was a member for most of his writing and acting career.

Actor Richard Burbage (Credit: Trustees of Dulwich Picture Gallery)

They were known as the Lord Chamberlain’s Men during the reign of Elizabeth I and become the King’s Men by the royal decree of King James I when he came to power in 1603.

In the royal patent of 1603, the King’s Men were named as – Lawrence Fletcher, William Shakespeare, Richard Burbage, Augustine Phillips, John Heminges, Henry Condell, William Sly, Robert Armin, Richard Cowley…”and the rest of their associates…”.

By the time of the troupe’s visit to Londesborough Hall in 1619/20 , several of the actors named in the patent had already died.

Lead actor Richard Burbage, who played Shakespeare’s demanding male parts – Richard III, Othello, King Lear, Antony and Macbeth – died in 1619, around the time of the Yorkshire performance.

Still in the King’s Men were veterans Heminges and Condell – who went on to publish Shakespeare’s works in the First Folio edition. While also among the troupe was the third in the line of famous Shakespearean clown actors John Shank, following in the footsteps of Robert Armin and previously William Kemp.

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