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United Company Finances, 1682–1692

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2009

Judith Milhous
Judith Milhous
Affiliation:
Associate Professor, Department of Communication and Theatre Arts, University of Iowa, USA.
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Extract

This essay is an attempt at a partial reconstruction of the finances of the United Company in London between 1682 and 1692. Ideally, one would wish to discover the ‘day bookes of the Theatre’ so often referred to ‘for greater certainty’ in lawsuits after the turn of the century. But even without them, we can calculate approximate figures for the company's fixed expenses and its declared profits year by year. Such a framework gives us a perspective from which to view an analysis of house charges, managers' fees, actors' incomes, and investments in particular productions. I have drawn together various bits of evidence, some of them well-known to specialists, but I have used the information in new ways. I have also speculated freely on how the pieces we have might fit together. There are limits to what we can deduce from available evidence, but this reconstruction does give us a much clearer idea than we have previously had of the scale of theatre as a business in late seventeenth-century London. A startling amount of money flowed through the United Company.

Type
Articles
Information
Theatre Research International , Volume 7 , Issue 1 , Winter 1981 , pp. 37 - 53
Copyright
Copyright © International Federation for Theatre Research 1981

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References

Notes

1. See Hotson, Leslie, The Commonwealth and Restoration Stage (1928; rpt. New York: Russell and Russell, 1962), pp. 288–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2. Legard's report is P.R.O. C38/246.

3. Figures which involve halfpennies have been silently rounded to the next highest penny or shilling.

4. See Milhous, Judith, ‘The Duke's Company's Profits, 1675–1677’, Theatre Notebook, 32 (1978), 76–88.Google Scholar

5. Langhans, Edward A., ‘New Restoration Theatre Accounts, 1682–1692’, Theatre Notebook, 17 (1963), 118–34Google Scholar. The documents are P.R.O. C105/34/16; they may have been compiled in connection with the Legard report.

6. See testimony by Isaac Fuller in C7/486/74, a transcription of which appears as the appendix to Vol. X of the California Dryden (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1970). Compare the box office reports – admittedly of questionable authenticity – for 12 and 26 December 1677 noted in The London Stage 1660–1800, Part 1: 1660–1700, ed. Lennep, William Van, Avery, Emmett L., and Scouten, Arthur H. (Carbondale: Southern Illinois Univ. Press, 1965), pp. 265–6Google Scholar. By contrast, see Downes, John, Roscius Anglicanus (1708; rpt. Los Angeles: Augustan Reprint Society, 1969), p. 41Google Scholar, on Shadwell's £ 130 for the third day of The Squire of Alsatia, ‘the greatest Receipt they ever had at that House [Drury Lane] at single Prizes’.

7. Langhans, , p. 121.Google Scholar

8. Unfortunately, Schedule No. 3 stops in 1687, when Thomas Davenant became the nominal manager. For details see Milhous, Judith, Thomas Betterton and the Management of Lincoln's Inn Fields, 1695–1708 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois Univ. Press, 1979), Chapter 3Google Scholar. Thomas Davenant was paid a flat salary, not a salary plus part of a share.

9. Roscius Anglicanus, p. 40.

10. A former treasurer of the Duke's Company had complained that some sharers ‘came or sent for their moneys when they pleased’. See Hotson, , p. 369.Google Scholar

11. Legard stated that ‘the plaintiff was or might have been present (at all times since the Union) to see things managed for the benefit of all concerned & that he was frequently present at Accounting and Ballancing the Bookes. And it appears to me by the Bookes… that the said Actors Sharers proceedings were approved or dissapproved… by the said Plaintiff & Doctor Davenant… And that Nothing of Moment was to be done but at Generall Meetings at which [were] to be present either the plaintiff or Doctor Davenant’ (C38/246).

12. The dead shares are mentioned in C24/1144 as part of ‘the moneyes in the bancke… not disposed’. The name suggests that they were an unassigned part of the actors' shares of profits. Adventurers could sell and deed their shares of profits; sharing actors were owed a sort of severance payment when they left the company, but did not control the assignment of their shares. (An obscure reference to dead shares also occurs in Legard's report.)

13. Milhous, , Betterton, pp. 124–5.Google Scholar

14. The Petition is LC 7/3, ff. 2–4; the Reply, ff. 8–20; for transcriptions see Milhous, Betterton, pp. 225–46. The Company Plan is LC 7/3, ff. 161–4. For a transcription see Nicoll, Allardyce, A History of English Drama, 1660–1900, rev. edn., 6 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1952–1959), II, 276–8.Google Scholar

See also Milhous, Judith, ‘The Date and Import of the Financial Plan for a United Theatre Company in P.R.O. LC 7/3’, Maske und Kothurn, 21 (1975), 81–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The list of constant and incident charges is LC 7/3, f. 155. The treasurer's reports are P.R.O. C105/34/16.

15. The London Stage, Part 1, p. lvi, cites this passage but does not consistently recognize the distinction between total house charges and the constant charge.

16. See Hotson, , p. 283.Google Scholar

17. See Survey of London, Vol. XXXV (London: Athlone Press, 1970), pp. 31 and 32. Treasurer Ralph Davenant deposed on 17 October 1691 ‘That the Ground Rent of the Theatre Royall in Drury Lane is payd and discharged by the propriettors in the building excepting the ground on which the Schene roome stands… which is thirty pound per Annum paid out of the profitts of the Theatres’ (C24/1144).

18. On the £130 see Hotson, p. 229. £143 is the figure Ralph Davenant quotes in C24/1144; it is also mentioned in the Reply of the Patentees. We have no separate record of taxes the company paid.

19. For information on the status and working conditions of musicians in the theatre, see Price, Curtis A., Music in the Restoration Theatre (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1979)Google Scholar, Chapter 3, and Love, Harold, ‘The Fiddlers on the Restoration Stage’, Early Music, 6 (1980), 391–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar. I have not found any reference to salaries for them.

20. In my essay, ‘Company Management’, I erroneously calculated the salary scale on the basis of a 180-day season (The London Theatre World, 1660–1800, ed. Hume, Robert D. [Carbondale: Southern Illinois Univ. Press, 1980], pp. 20–1)Google Scholar. The Plan gives various figures for length of season, all significantly longer than the 209-day average between 1682 and 1692: ‘180 days… & 100 days more’; 40 weeks or 240 days; and 38 weeks or 228 days. 240 days seems to represent the Plan fairly without being as impractical as 280.

21. Thomas' salary is recorded in the Reply as £3 10s a week (Milhous, , Betterton, p. 239)Google Scholar, but I suspect that figure is either a scribal error or perhaps a salary paid him after Alexander's unceremonious departure from England. Less easy to explain is treasurer Ralph Davenant's assertion in C24/1144 that Thomas was paid 20s a week. Perhaps he meant that £1 came from the stipend formerly paid Betterton and Smith, the other £1 10s from profits when available.

22. Davenant was paid as a trainee for 36 days of 1687–8, as a manager for 173 days.

23. Milhous, , Betterton, pp. 242–4.Google Scholar

24. Mrs Barry's benefit is one of the practices the patentees interfered with – see Milhous, , Betterton, pp. 227, 238–9, and 243.Google Scholar

25. One hint at such a practice is the twelve tickets per week allowed Charles Davenant and the ‘two box tickets, four pit tickets, or six middle-gallery tickets’ given to both Rich and Skipwith each week. See Hotson, , pp. 285–6.Google Scholar

26. In 1682–3, these sources produced £130; £20 in 1683–4; £145 in 1684–5; £395 in 1685–6; £430 in 1686–7; £100 in 1687–8; £25 in 1688–9; £85 in 1689–90; £80in 1690–1; and£45 in 1691–2. See the Lord Chamberlain's warrants for payment printed by Nicoli, I, 349–50. Some were written to individual actors rather than to the whole company.

27. The London Stage estimates aftermoney at £700–800 (Part 1, p. liii). However, the Petition of the Players says, ‘We were persuaded to part with our Interest in the aftermoney… which brings in 400 or 500ℓℓ per annum.’ The patentees deny even the lower figure (Milhous, , Betterton, pp. 227–36).Google Scholar

28. Deane, Phyllis and Cole, W. A., British Economic Growth, 1688–1959 (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1962), pp. 1–3Google Scholar. See also Burnett, John, A History of the Cost of Living (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969), p. 123.Google Scholar

29. See English Historical Documents, 1660–1714, ed. Browning, Andrew (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1934), pp. 469–70.Google Scholar

30. See Gilboy, Elizabeth W., Wages in Eighteenth Century England (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1934), Chapters 1–2.Google Scholar

31. English Historical Documents, pp. 418–19.

32. For some examples of ‘the emoluments’ of court offices after 1714, see Beattie, John M., The English Court in the Reign of George I (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1967), pp. 209–14.Google Scholar

33. On Doggett, see Milhous, , Betterton, p. 243Google Scholar. On Cibber, see his Apology, ed. Lowe, Robert W., 2 vols. (1889; rpt. New York: AMS Press, 1966), I, 181 and note.Google Scholar

34. According to a 1693 lawsuit, Betterton had owned £ 1:02:09 worth of Dorset Garden rent since 1674 (Hotson, p. 231). In 1694 the patentees conceded him only £ (Milhous, , Betterton, pp. 234 and 239–40)Google Scholar. I have used the lower, unchallenged figure in my calculations, though in 1705 he was still claiming the higher (C5/337/42).

35. Hotson, , pp. 233–4Google Scholar. The patentees raise the issue of his paying rent in their Reply. The Bettertons probably moved out of the Dorset Garden apartment soon thereafter.

36. Milhous, , Betterton, pp. 52–4.Google Scholar

37. Milhous, , Betterton, p. 234Google Scholar; Pinacotheca Bettertonaeana (24 08 1710); Gildon, Charles, The Life of Mr. Thomas Betterton (1710; rpt. New York: Augustus M. Kelley, 1970), p. 11.Google Scholar

38. P.R.O. C8/599/77.

39. The London Stage, Part 1, pp. lv–lvi and ciii.

40. Milhous, , Betterton, p. 238.Google Scholar

41. The distinction between shares of rent on Dorset Garden and shares of United Company profits blurs in Hotson's account of the Davenant shares. Compare pp. 231 and 284–5. I have no solution to this puzzle; part of Hotson's source (C10/297/57) had become detached and was missing when I looked for it in the P.R.O. in 1976.

42. Hotson, , p. 286.Google Scholar

43. See C8/542/88 and C24/1144.