Marlborough pays a bargain basement price for Shakespeare’s Acting Company

The prosperous market town of Marlborough in Wiltshire was a popular performance venue for Shakespeare’s company of actors.

His troupe performed there no less than four times while Shakespeare was a part of the company – and still acting – and on two further occasions after his death.

However, in 1594, when the company was called The Lord Chamberlain’s Men, they had the dubious distinction of receiving the lowest payment to play by the town at any time during that year, a measly 2s.8d!

When the company returned shortly after Shakespeare’s death, they were paid far more, 30s on one occasion (and 20s on the other). Unsurprisingly perhaps, given that by that time they were known as the King’s Men and were the premier performing company in the land.

“The town was more generous than it ever had been or ever would be”, writes Professor Ted McGee, Editor for the Wiltshire area from the Records of Early English Drama project (REED).

For Shakespeare's companies and for others, Marlborough had the advantage of being on the main road from London to Bath and Bristol. The town rewarded travelling troupes almost every year from 1583 until 1623, on average more than one company per year.

Shakespeare's company visited Marlborough twice as the Lord Chamberlain's men (in 1594 and 1596-7), four times as the King's men (in 1606, 1607-8, and twice in 1618).

The year in which the Lord Chamberlain's men first came to Marlborough, 1594, coincides with the publication of Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus, a play that takes us to Longleat House, near Warminster, Wiltshire.

This is because the magnificent library in the stately home of the Marquess of Bath holds many invaluable records of early modern drama, including the unique copy of a sketch of, it seems, Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus in performance.

This document is a single sheet of paper, folded once. The second page contains the drawing at the top and below it a transcription of lines from Act 1, scene 1 and Act 5, scene 1 of Shakespeare's play.

The connections of the picture, the textual excerpts, the date, and the supposed author are all still fraught with uncertainties however. The drawing is signed and dated by Henry Peacham, who graduated from Cambridge in 1595, but we do not know what role he played in the creation or acquisition of the piece.

Despite all its uncertainties, the picture does provide a good illustration of the eclectic style of performance that one would expect of an early modern company on tour. The Titus figure wears a costume, including tunic, toga, and sandals, that approximates the attire of ancient Rome. But Tamora's costume is not distinctively that of a Goth; in her gown and crown, she could be a queen of any realm at various times in history.

The guards at the left of the picture include one who wears baggy pants and a scimitar, as if he is Turkish or Persian, and another in Elizabethan breeches, breast plate, and soldier's armour. Both of them carry halberds, weapons familiar to any 16th-century theatre-goer but anachronisms in ancient Rome—weapons that Shakespeare's company might have borrowed from the locals when in Marlborough or in other towns throughout the realm.

Whether in London or in the provinces, Shakespeare and his fellow actors knew that audiences would play along, use their imaginations, and "piece out [such] imperfections with [their] thoughts." (Henry V)