d Mayor, John Hart, under
instructions from Lord Burghley, issued orders prohibiting them from
performing in the City. It is not unlikely that their connection with
the Martin Marprelate affair earlier in the year at the Theatre, and
their deliberate defiance of the Mayor's orders in performing at the
Crosskeys on the afternoon of the day the prohibition was issued,
delayed the full measure of Court favour presaged for them by their
recent drastic--and evidently officially encouraged--reorganisation.
When they performed at Court in the Christmas seasons of 1589-90 and
1590-91, they did so as the Lord Admiral's men; and in the latter
instance, while the Acts of the Privy Council credit the performance to
the Admiral's, the Pipe Rolls assign it to Strange's men.[19] Seeing
that the Admiral's men had submitted dutifully to the Mayor's orders,
and that Lord Strange's men--two of whom had been committed to the
Counter for their contempt--were again called before the Mayor and
forbidden to play, the company's reason for performing at Court at this
period as the Lord Admiral's men is plainly apparent. It is not unlikely
that their transfer to Henslowe's financial management became necessary
because of Burbage's continued disfavour with Lord Burghley and the City
authorities, as well as his financial inability adequately to provide
for the needs of the new Court company, in 1591. In the defiance of
Burghley's and the Mayor's orders by the Burbage portion of the company,
and the subservience of the Alleyn element at this time, is foreshadowed
their future political bias as independent companies. From the time of
their separation in 1594 until the death of Elizabeth, the Lord
Admiral's company represented the Cecil-Howard, and Burbage's company
the Essex factional and political interests in their covert stage
polemics. Shakespeare's friendship and intimacy with Essex's _fidus
Achates_, the Earl of Southampton, between 1591 and 1601, served
materially to accentuate the pro-Essex leanings of his company. This
phase of Shakespeare's theatrical career has not been investigated by
past critics, though Fleay, Simpson, and Feis recognise the critical and
biographical importance of such an inquiry, while the compilers do not
even suspect that such a phase existed.

While the Curtain seems to have escaped trouble arising from its lease
and its ownership, the Theatre came in for more than its share. The
comparative freedom of the Curtain f