Essex and the Limits of Toleration, 1600–03

Abstract

The Essex rebellion proves in a way that the Privy Council were right to fear disorder in the Queen’s declining years and to anticipate that the theatre might be involved. On 7 February 1601 the Chamberlain’s Men performed a play about Richard II at their Globe playhouse. The following day the Earl of Essex led an abortive coup, for which he and several of his followers were eventually tried and executed. That the two events were not unconnected is confirmed by the testimony of Augustine Phillips, a senior member of the Chamberlain’s Men, who was examined on the matter by Lord Chief Justice Popham and Justice Fenner on 18 February. Phillips declared that the players had been approached by half a dozen men of substance, including Lord Mounteagle and the brothers, Sir Charles and Sir Jocelyn Percy, who asked ‘to have the play of the deposing and killing of King Richard the Second to be played the Saturday next’. The actors resisted the proposal, ‘holding that play of King Richard to be so old and so long out of use as that they shold have small or no Company at it’, but they were promised forty shillings ‘more then their ordynary’ and eventually ‘at their request [they] were Content to play yt’.¹ Their audience that day included many of Essex’s supporters, including Mounteagle, Christopher Blount and Essex’s steward, Sir Gelly Meyrick.