Page:The Elizabethan stage (Volume 2).pdf/298

 and instrumental music and in plays to be supplied either by Maurice or by themselves, and not to leave Cassel without his permission. Certainly Browne was the Landgrave's man by 16 April 1595, when a warrant was issued allowing the export of a consignment of bows and arrows which he had been sent over to bring from England to Cassel. The 'fürstlich hessische Diener und Comoetianten' were at Nuremberg on 5 July 1596, and a company under Philip Konigsman were at Strassburg in the following August. Festivities were now in preparation at Cassel for the christening of Maurice's daughter, one of whose godmothers was Queen Elizabeth, on 24 August 1596. Brown and one John Webster were on duty at Cassel during the visit of the Earl of Lincoln, who came from England to stand proxy for Elizabeth. Payments to the English comedians and performances by them at Melsungen, Weissenstein, and Rothenburg, in the Landgrave's territory, are recorded in the Cassel archives during 1597 and 1598. A proposed loan of them in 1597 to Landgrave Louis of Marburg seems to have fallen through, but in 1598 they left Cassel for the Court of the Palsgrave Frederic IV at Heidelberg, with a liberal Abfertigung or vail of 300 thalers and a travelling allowance of 20 thalers, which was entrusted to George Webster. From Heidelberg they went to Frankfort towards the end of 1599, but were refused leave to play, owing to the prevalence of plague. Robert Browne, Robert Kingman, and Robert Ledbetter were then of the company. Ledbetter must have recently joined them, as he is in the cast of ''Frederick and Basilea'' as played by the Admiral's men in 1597. Frankfort having failed them, they fell back upon Strassburg, and here they seem to have remained until the spring of 1601. Browne was their leader at their arrival, but he then seems to have left them and returned to England, where he came to Court as manager of the Earl of Derby's men during the winters of