to playhouses had been erected merely
as pecuniary investments by profit-seeking business men,--Burbage,[379]
Brayne, Lanman, Henslowe, Cholmley, Langley,--and had been conducted
in the interests of the proprietors rather than of the actors.[380] As
a result, these proprietors had long reaped an unduly rich harvest
from the efforts of the players, taking all or a large share of the
income from the galleries. The new scheme was designed to remedy these
faults.

[Footnote 379: That even James Burbage is to be put in this class
cannot be disputed.]

[Footnote 380: Cuthbert Burbage in 1635 says: "The players that lived
in those first times had only the profits arising from the doors, but
now the players receive all the comings-in at the doors to themselves
and half the galleries from the housekeepers." (Halliwell-Phillipps,
_Outlines_, I, 317.)]

[Illustration: RICHARD BURBAGE

(Reproduced by permission from a painting in the Dulwich Picture
Gallery; photograph by Emery Walker, Ltd.)]

For participation in this scheme the Burbages selected the following
men: William Shakespeare, not only a successful actor, but a poet who
had already made his reputation as a writer of plays, and who gave
promise of greater attainments; John Heminges, a good actor and an
exceptionally shrewd man of business, who until his death managed the
pecuniary affairs of the company with distinguished success; Augustine
Phillips and Thomas Pope, both ranked with the best actors of the
day;[381] and William Kempe, the greatest comedian since Tarleton,
described in 1600 as "a player in interludes, and partly the Queen's
Majesty's jester." When to this group we add Richard Burbage himself,
the Roscius of his age, we have an organization of business,
histrionic, and poetic ability that could not be surpassed. It was
carefully planned, and it deserved the remarkable success which it
attained. The superiority of the Globe Company over all others was
acknowledged in the days of James and Charles, and to-day stands out
as one of the most impressive facts in the history of the early drama.

[Footnote 381: See, for example, Thomas Heywood's _Apology for Actors_
(1612). In enumerating the greatest actors of England he says:
"Gabriel, Singer, Pope, Phillips, Sly--all the right I can do them is
but this, that though they be dead, their deserts yet live in the
remembrance of many."]

According to the original plan there were to be ten shares in the new
ent