s of name, owing to the death or change from other
causes of the patrons, render it difficult to trace with certainty each
company's history. But there seems no doubt that the most influential of
the companies named--that under the nominal patronage of the Earl of
Leicester--passed on his death in September 1588 to the patronage of
Ferdinando Stanley, lord Strange, who became Earl of Derby on September
25, 1592. When the Earl of Derby died on April 16, 1594, his place as
patron and licenser was successively filled by Henry Carey, first lord
Hunsdon, Lord Chamberlain (_d._ July 23, 1596), and by his son and heir,
George Carey, second lord Hunsdon, who himself became Lord Chamberlain in
March 1597. After King James's succession in May 1603 the company was
promoted to be the King's players, and, thus advanced in dignity, it
fully maintained the supremacy which, under its successive titles, it had
already long enjoyed.

A member of the Lord Chamberlain's.

It is fair to infer that this was the company that Shakespeare originally
joined and adhered to through life. Documentary evidence proves that he
was a member of it in December 1594; in May, 1603 he was one of its
leaders. Four of its chief members--Richard Burbage, the greatest tragic
actor of the day, John Heming, Henry Condell, and Augustine Phillips were
among Shakespeare's lifelong friends. Under this company's auspices,
moreover, Shakespeare's plays first saw the light. Only two of the plays
claimed for him--'Titus Andronicus' and '3 Henry VI'--seem to have been
performed by other companies (the Earl of Sussex's men in the one case,
and the Earl of Pembroke's in the other).

The London theatres.

When Shakespeare became a member of the company it was doubtless
performing at The Theatre, the playhouse in Shoreditch which James
Burbage, the father of the great actor, Richard Burbage, had constructed
in 1576; it abutted on the Finsbury Fields, and stood outside the City's
boundaries. The only other London playhouse then in existence--the
Curtain in Moorfields--was near at hand; its name survives in Curtain
Road, Shoreditch. But at an early date in his acting career
Shakespeare's company sought and found new quarters. While known as Lord
Strange's men, they opened on February 19, 1592, a third London theatre,
called the Rose, which Philip Henslowe, the speculative theatrical
manager, had erected on the Bankside, Southwark. At the date of the
i