Page:The Elizabethan stage (Volume 2).pdf/63

 which that description well fits; that of 22 February may have been the anonymous ''Contention between Liberality and Prodigality''. Both of these were published in 1601. Jonson has preserved for us in his Folio of 1616 the list of the principal actors of Cynthia's Revels, who were 'Nat. Field, Sal. Pavy, Tho. Day, Ioh. Underwood, Rob. Baxter and Ioh. Frost'. The induction of the play is spoken by 'Iacke' and two other of the Children, of whom one, impersonating a spectator, complains that 'the vmbrae, or ghosts of some three or foure playes, departed a dozen yeeres since, haue bin seene walking on your stage heere'. Liberality and Prodigality may be one of the old-fashioned plays here scoffed at, but it is probable that Jonson also had in mind Lyly's Love's Metamorphosis, which was published in 1601 as 'first playd by the Children of Paules, and now by the Children of the Chappell', and there may have been other revivals of the same kind. The company was included in the Lenten prohibition of 11 March 1601. Later in the year they produced Jonson's Poetaster, containing raillery of the common stages, which stimulated a reply in Dekker's Satiromastix, and which, together with their growing popularity, sufficiently explains the reference to the 'aerie of children, little eyases' in Hamlet. The Poetaster was published in 1602 and the actor-list of the Folio of 1616 contains the names of 'Nat. Field, Sal Pavy, Tho. Day, Ioh. Underwood, Wil. Ostler and Tho. Marton'. The full name of Pavy, who died after acting for three years, is given as Salathiel in the epigram written to his memory by Jonson; it appears as Salmon in a document which adds considerably to our knowledge both of the original constitution of the company and of the lines on which it was managed. This is a complaint to the Star Chamber by one Henry Clifton, Esq., of Toftrees, Norfolk, against a serious abuse of the powers of impressment entrusted under the royal commission to Nathaniel Giles. Clifton alleged that Giles, in confederacy with Evans, one James Robinson and others, had set up a play-house for their own profit in the Blackfriars, and under colour of the commission had taken boys, not for the royal service in the Chapel Royal, but employment in acting interludes. He specified as so taken, 'John Chappell, a gramer schole scholler of one Mr. Spykes schole neere Criplegate, London; John Motteram, a gramer scholler in the free schole at Westmi[n]ster; Nathan ffield, a scholler of a gramer