self-condemned. As regards the performance of Shakespeare’s Richard II. on the eve of the Essex rising, I am not sure that the actors were quite as innocent as they made out. Great stress was laid on the piece being “so old and so long out of use” as explaining the gratuity received for the performance, but it was not in fact an exoleta tragoedia, and it is least possible that they were aware of some risk involved.
Chapter XIV. on “International Companies,” after brief treatment of the Italian players in England and the English players in Scotland, traces in detail the fortunes of the bands of English actors who made the continent their hunting ground. Their main preserves were Germany (including Austria), the Netherlands, and Denmark; they seem to have left little trace in France; to Sweden, Poland, Italy, and Spain they just penetrated. The history of their wanderings is of some dramatic importance, but it is dry reading and, probably through compression, Dr. Chambers’ exposition seems here to lose some of its wonted lucidity. The last chapter of the Book, consisting of a biographical dictionary of “Actors,” is of immense importance, and happily supersedes the wholly inadequate list of Fleay and Collier’s unreliable disquisitions, though it is possible that some of the dates may yet require revision. I will only note that Dr. Chambers has anticipated two conclusions I had reached independently: one that Nathan Field, the actor, was the younger brother of Nathaniel Field, the printer (whom Collier unreasonably murdered in infancy), as well as of the Bishop of Llandaff; the other that there is no sufficient ground for supposing two Robert Wilsons.
The Fourth Book treats of “The Play-Houses,” and Chapter XVI. on “The Public Theatres” includes a most useful Introduction on the theatres in general and a summary of the very unsatisfactory evidence afforded by the maps and pictures of contemporary date. The public houses dealt with are sixteen in number, the private (in Chapter XVII.) two; but though the author doubtless has good reasons for classing the abortive Porter’s Hall theatre in the Blackfriars among the former, they are not very apparent to the reader. Among public houses are also classed five inns. The more important theatres for the period are five, the Theatre, Curtain, Rose, Globe, and Fortune, and among these interest centres in the Globe both on account of its associations and of the curious difficulties that surround the question of its site. This may now be taken as
