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 seems to have been free of any liability to contribute towards the upkeep of the stock or other current expenses. The shares were often subdivided, so that some members of the company were full sharers, others half sharers or three-quarter sharers. The number of shares varied; an ordinary London company may be taken to have consisted of about ten or twelve sharers. For travelling purposes it is probable that separate compositions were entered into, except perhaps for short summer tours, and that the numbers were smaller. It should be made clear that the companies of players, although based upon the bodies of royal or noble servants constituted under patents or other warrants of appointment, were not precisely identical with these. Each company had to get the authority of such a warrant, before it was licensed to act at all, but the legal bond of association between its members was not the warrant, but the composition. As a rule the terms of the patents give or imply a power to those named in them to associate themselves with others. New members could doubtless be sworn into the service of the lord without any need for a fresh patent. But it cannot be held that every fellow sharer was necessarily a servant of the same lord, and still less that every servant named in a warrant was necessarily a sharer of any particular company acting under that warrant. Thus there is no proof that Laurence Fletcher, who is named first amongst the King's servants of 1603, ever acted with the King's men. Similarly Martin