(1594, S. R. 2 May 1594), and The True Tragedy of Richard Duke of York (1595). Probably the play to which this last is a sequel, 1 Contention of York and Lancaster (1594, S. R. 12 March 1594) was also theirs, although the name of the company is not on the title-page. It is on the title-page of Titus Andronicus (1594), and its position suggests that the play passed to them from Strange's and from them before publication to Sussex's. All these plays, with the exception of Edward II, seem to have been worked upon by Shakespeare, and probably they ultimately became part of the stock of the Chamberlain's men. These men were playing Titus Andronicus and The Taming of The Shrew in June 1594, and that they also owned The Contention in its revised form of 2, 3 Henry VI is suggested both by its inclusion in the First Folio and by the reference in the Epilogue to Henry V not only to the loss of France but also to the bleeding of England 'which oft our stage hath shown'.
I now enter a region of conjecture. It seems to me, on the whole, likely that the origin of Pembroke's men is to be explained by the special conditions of the plague-years 1592-3, and was due to a division for travelling purposes of the large London company formed by the amalgamation of Strange's and the Admiral's. Such a division had been foreshadowed as likely to be necessary in the petition sent by Strange's men to the Privy Council during the summer of 1592 or earlier, and may actually have become necessary when, after all, the plague rendered travelling imperative. If this suggestion is well founded, it becomes not difficult to explain some of the transferences of acting rights in certain plays which seem to have taken place. Thus Strange's may have handed over Titus Andronicus in its earlier form of Titus and Vespasian to Pembroke's for the travels of 1593, and may also have handed over The Contention of York and Lancaster, if that was originally theirs, as is suggested by their production of 1 Henry VI, which belongs to the same closely related series. This opens up a more important line of speculation. It is usual to assume that one of the members of Strange's from 1592 or earlier until its reconstitution as the Chamberlain's in 1594 was William Shakespeare, and there is no reason to doubt his authorship at any rate of the Talbot scenes, which we know from Nashe to have been staged as part of 1 Henry VI in 1592. At the same time, the names of at least seventeen of Strange's and the Admiral's men in 1590-3 are otherwise known, and his is not one of them, and in particular his prominence amongst the Chamberlain's men from the very beginning renders it extremely
