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 In 1594-5 he was one of the recently constituted Chamberlain's men and the intrusion of his name into stage-directions to R. J. iv. 5. 102 (Q_{2}) and M. Ado, iv. 2, shows that he played Peter in the one play and Dogberry in the other. Oddly enough, one of his speeches (iv. 2. 4) in M. Ado is assigned to 'Andrew', possibly a generic name for a clown or 'merry-Andrew'. He is in the actor-list of Every Man in his Humour (1598) but not in that of Every Man out of his Humour (1599), and this fact, together with his sale of his share in the Globe soon after the lease of 21 February 1599 was signed, points to his leaving the company. 'Would I had one of Kemps shooes to throw after you,' says a speaker in E. M. O. v (q.v.). This may be an allusion to some clownery by Kempe, perhaps in a performance with some other company at the Curtain in the autumn of 1599 after the Chamberlain's left that house; or, less probably, to Kempe's famous morris-dance for a wager from London to Norwich, at the end of which he hung his buskins in the Guildhall, for this began on 11 February 1600 and ended on 11 March, the year being fixed by the mayoralty (1599-1600) of Roger Weld at Norwich. Another allusion to 'Kemps morice' is in Jack Drum's Entertainment (1600), i. 45. Dudley Carleton wrote to John Chamberlain on 13 October 1600 (S. P. D. Eliz. cclxxv. 93) that on his way from Witham to Englefield 'we met a company of mad wenches, whereof M^{rs}. Mary Wroughton and young Stafford were ringleaders, who travelled from house to house, and to some places where they were little known, attended with a concert of musicians, as if they had undertaken the like adventure as Kemp did from London to Norwich'. Kempe's own account of his adventure was entered in the Stationers' Register as 'Kemps morris to Norwiche' on 22 April 1600 (Arber, iii. 160). In the Epistle to Anne Fitton, whom, possibly by confusion with her sister Mary, he describes as maid of honour to Elizabeth, he refers to unentered ballads on the subject, and when he says that 'I haue daunst my selfe out of the world' is not improbably jesting on his departure from the Globe. At the end he foreshadows crossing to Calais, which he no doubt did. A John Kemp, who was in charge of a touring company, which had been in Holland and reached Münster by November 1601, may have been a relative. But William Kempe had returned to England, after visiting Italy as well as Germany, on 2 September 1601, as is shown by the following interpolation in a diary of one William Smith of Abingdon, in Sloane MS. 414, f. 56 (wrongly cited by Halliwell, Ludus Coventriae 410, as Sloane MS. 392, f. 401; cf. F. J. Furnivall in N.S.S. Trans. 1880-6, 65):

'Sep. 2. Kemp, mimus quidam, qui peregrinationem quandam in Germaniam et Italiam instituerat, post multos errores, et infortunia sua, reversus: multa refert de Anthonio Sherley, equite aurato, quem Romae (legatum Persicum agentem) convenerat.'

Possibly Kempe rejoined the Chamberlain's for a while. In 3 Parnassus (? January 1602), iv. 3, he is introduced as a fellow of Burbadge and Shakespeare, and greeted with allusions to his 'dancing the morrice ouer the Alpes' and 'the Emperour of Germany'. But on 10 March