evidence. In Sir Henry Herbert's Office-book I find the following curious notices on this subject, under the year 1628:

"The kinges company with a generall consent and alacritye have given mee the benefitt of too dayes in the yeare, the one in summer, thother in winter, to bee taken out of the second daye of a revived playe, att my owne choyse. The housekeepers have likewyse given their shares, their dayly charge only deducted, which comes to some 21. 5s. this 25 May, 1628.

"The benefitt of the first day, being a very unseasonable one in respect of the weather, comes but unto £.4. 15. 0."

This agreement subsisted for five years and a half, during which time Sir Henry Herbert had ten benefits, the most profitable of which produced seventeen pounds, and ten shillings, net, on the 22d of Nov. 1628, when Fletcher's Custom of the Country was performed at Blackfriars; and the least emolument which he received was on the representation of a play which is not named, at the Globe, in the summer of the year 1632, which produced only the sum of one pound and five shillings, after deducting from the total receipt in each instance the nightly charge above mentioned. I shall give below the receipt taken by him on each of the ten performances; from which it appears that his clear profit at an average on each of his nights, was .8. 19. 4.3 and the total nightly receipt was at an average-.11. 4. 4.

1628. May 25, [the play not named,]-£.4. 15. 0.

"The benefitt of the winters day, being the second daye of an old play called The Custome of the Cuntrye, came to £.17. 10. O. this 22 of Nov. 1028. From the Kinges company att the Blackfryers

On the 30th of October, 1633, the managers of the king's company agreed to pay him the fixed

1629. "The benefitt of the summers day from the kinges company being brought mee by Blagrave, upon the play of The Prophetess, comes to, this 21 of July, 1629,£.6.7.0.

"The benefitt of the winters day from the kinges company being brought mee by Blagrave, upon the play of The Moor of Venise, comes, this 22 of Nov. 1629, unto-£.9. 16. 0.

1630. [No play this summer on account of the plague.]

"Received of Mr. Taylor and Lowins, in the name of their company, for the benefitt of my winter day, upon the second day of Ben Jonson's play of Every man in his humour, this 18 day of February, 1630, [1630-31]£.12. 4. O.

1631. "Received of Mr. Shanke, in the name of the kings company, for the benefitt of their summer day, upon ye second daye of Richard y Seconde, at the Globe, this 12 of June, 1631,—£.5. 6. 6.

1632.

1633.

"Received of Mr. Blagrave, in the name of the kings company, for the benefitt of my winter day, taken upon The Alchemiste, this 1 of Decemb. 1631,-£.13. 0. 0. "Received for the summer day of the kings company ye 6 Novemb. 1631.-£.1. 5. 0.

Received for the winter day upon The Wild goose chase, y same day,-£.15. 0. 0.

"R. of ye kings company, for my summers day, by Blagrave, the 6 of June 1633, ye somme of £.4. 10. 0.” I likewise find the following entry in this book:

"Received of Mr. Benfielde, in the name of the kings company, for a gratuity for ther liberty gaind unto them of playinge, upon the cessation of the plague, this 10 of June, 1631,£.3. 10. 0."-" This (Sir Henry Herbert adds) was taken upon Pericles at the Globe."

In a copy of a play called A Game at Chess, 1624, which was formerly in possession of Thomas Pearson, Esq. is the following memorandum in an old hand: "After nine days, wherein I have heard some of the actors say they took fifteen hundred pounds, the Spanish faction, being prevalent, got it suppressed, and the author, Mr. Thomas Middleton, committed to prison." According to this statement, they received above 1661. 12s. on each performance. The foregoing extracts show, that there is not even a semblance of truth in this story. In the year 1685,

sum of ten pounds every Christmas, and the same sum at Midsummer, in lieu of his two benefits, which sums they regularly paid him from that time till the breaking out of the civil wars.

From the receipts on these benefits I am led to believe that the prices were lower at the Globe theatre, and that therefore, though it was much larger than the winter theatre at Blackfriars, it did not produce a greater sum of money on any representation. If we suppose twenty pounds, clear of the nightly charges already mentioned, to have been a very considerable receipt at either of these houses, and that this sum was in our poet's time divided into forty shares, of which fifteen were appropriated to the housekeepers or proprietors, three to the purchase of copies of new plays, stage-habits, &c. and twenty-two to the actors, then the per

when the London theatres were much enlarged, and the prices of admission greatly increased, Shadwell received by his third day on the representation of The Squire of Alsatia, only 1301. which Downes the prompter says was the greatest receipt had been ever taken at Drury Lane playhouse at single prices. Roscius Anglicanus, p. 41.

The use of Arabick figures has often occasioned very gross errors to pass current in the world. I suppose the utmost receipt from the performance of Middleton's play for nine days, (if it was performed so often,) could not amount to more than one hundred and fifty pounds. To the sum of 150l. which perhaps this old actor had seen as the profit made by this play, his fancy or his negligence added a cipher, and thus made fifteen hundred pounds.

The play of Holland's Leaguer was acted six days successively at Salisbury Court, in December, 1631, and yet Sir Henry Herbert received on account of the six representations but one pound nineteen shillings, in virtue of the ninth share which he possessed as one of the proprietors of that house. Supposing there were twenty-one shares divided among the actors, the piece, though performed with such extraordinary success, did not produce more than six pounds ten shillings each night, exclusive of the occasional nightly charges already mentioned.

former who had two shares on the representation of each play, received, when the theatre was thus successful, twenty shillings. But supposing the average nightly receipt (after deducting the nightly expences) to be about nine pounds, which we have seen to be the case, then his nightly dividend would be but nine shillings, and his weekly profit, if they played five times a week, two pounds five shillings. The acting season, I believe, at that time lasted forty weeks. In each of the companies then subsisting there were about twenty persons, six of whom probably were principal, and the others subordinate; so that we may suppose two shares to have been the reward of a principal actor; six of the second class perhaps enjoyed a whole share each; and each of the remaining eight half a share. On all these data, I think it may be safely concluded, that the performers of the first class did not derive from their profession more than ninety pounds a year at the utmost. Shakspeare, Heminge, Condell, Burbadge, Lowin, and Taylor had without doubt other shares as proprietors or leaseholders; but what the different proportions were which each of them possessed in that right, it is now impossible to ascertain. According to the supposition already stated,

"The verye hyerlings of some of our plaiers, [i. e. men occasionally hired by the night] says Stephen Gosson in the year 1579, which stand at reversion of vi s. by the weeke, jet under gentlemen's noses in sutes of silke." Schoole of Abuse, p. 22.

Hart, the celebrated tragedian, after the Restoration had but three pounds a week as an actor, that is, about ninety pounds a year; for the acting season did not, I believe, at that time exceed thirty weeks; but he had besides, as a proprietor, six shillings and three pence every day on which there was any performance at the king's theatre, which produced about £56. 5. 0. more. Betterton even at the beginning of the present century had not more than five pounds a week.

that fifteen shares out of forty were appropriated to the proprietors, then was there on this account a sum of six hundred and seventy-five pounds annually to be divided among them. Our poet, as author, actor, and proprietor, probably received from the theatre about two hundred pounds a year. -Having after a very long search lately discovered the will of Mr. Heminge, I hoped to have derived from it some information on this subject; but I was disappointed. He indeed more than once mentions his several parts or shares held by lease in the Globe and Blackfriars playhouses; but uses no expression by which the value of each of those shares can be ascertained. His books of account, which he appears to have regularly kept, and which, he says, will show that his shares yielded him "a good yearly profit," will probably, if they shall ever be found, throw much light on our early stage history.

Thus scanty and meagre were the apparatus and accommodations of our ancient theatres, on which those dramas were first exhibited, that have since engaged the attention of so many learned men, and delighted so many thousand spectators. Yet even then, we are told by a writer of that age," 6dra

See his Will in a subsequent page.

Sir George Buc. This writer, as I have already observed, wrote an express treatise concerning the English stage, which was never printed, and, I fear, is now irrecoverably lost. As he was a friend of Sir Robert Cotton, I hoped to have found the Manuscript in the Cottonian library, but was disappointed. “Of this art," [the dramatick] says Sir George, have written largely Petrus Victorius, &c. as it were in vaine for me to say any thing of the art, besides that I have written thereof a particular treatise." The Third University of England, printed originally in 1615, and re-printed at the end of Howes's edition of Stowe's Annals, folio, 1631, p. 1082. It is singular that a