it in either character as depicted by Shakespeare which a reading
of Chapman's _Homer_ would fail to suggest. The controversial
interpretation of the play is in conflict with chronology (for _Troilus_
cannot, on any showing, be assigned to the period of the war between
Jonson and Dekker, in 1601-2), and it seems confuted by the facts and
arguments already adduced in the discussion of the theatrical conflict
(see pp. 213-219). If more direct disproof be needed, it may be found in
Shakespeare's prologue to _Troilus_, where there is a good-humoured and
expressly pacific allusion to the polemical aims of Jonson's _Poetaster_.
Jonson had introduced into his play 'an _armed_ prologue' on account, he
asserted, of his enemies' menaces. Shakespeare, after describing in his
prologue to _Troilus_ the progress of the Trojan war before his story
opened, added that his 'prologue' presented itself '_arm'd_,' not to
champion 'author's pen or actor's voice,' but simply to announce in a
guise befitting the warlike subject-matter that the play began in the
middle of the conflict between Greek and Trojan, and not at the
beginning. These words of Shakespeare put out of court any
interpretation of Shakespeare's play that would represent it as a
contribution to the theatrical controversy.

{230} _England's Mourning Garment_, 1603, sign. D. 3.

{231} At the same time the Earl of Worcester's company was taken into
the Queen's patronage, and its members were known as 'the Queen's
servants,' while the Earl of Nottingham's company was taken into the
patronage of the Prince of Wales, and its members were known as the
Prince's servants. This extended patronage of actors by the royal family
was noticed as especially honourable to the King by one of his
contemporary panegyrists, Gilbert Dugdale, in his _Time Triumphant_,
1604, sig. B.

{232a} The entry, which appears in the accounts of the Treasurer of the
Chamber, was first printed in 1842 in Cunningham's _Extracts from the
Accounts of the Revels at Court_, p. xxxiv. A comparison of Cunningham's
transcript with the original in the Public Record Office (_Audit
Office_--_Declared Accounts_--Treasurer of the Chamber, bundle 388, roll
41) shows that it is accurate. The Earl of Pembroke was in no way
responsible for the performance at Wilton House. At the time, the Court
was formally installed in his house (cf. _Cal. State Papers_, Dom.
1603-10) pp. 47-59), and the Court officers commissioned