Page:The Elizabethan stage (Volume 2).pdf/71

 the induction to the Malcontent we learn that it was appropriated by the King's men, in return for the performance by the boys of a play on Jeronimo, perhaps the extant I Jeronimo, in which the King's claimed rights. Marston's satirical temper did not, however, prove altogether an asset to the company; and I fear that the deference of its directors to literary suggestions was not compatible with that practical political sense, which as a rule enabled the professional players to escape conflicts with authority. The history of the next few years is one of a series of indiscretions, which render it rather surprising that the company should throughout have succeeded in maintaining its vitality, even with the help of constant reconstructions of management and changes of name. The first trouble, the nature of which is unknown, appears to have been caused by Marston's Dutch Courtesan. Then came, ironically enough, the Philotas of the company's official censor, Samuel Daniel. Then, in 1605, the serious affair of Eastward Ho! for which Marston appears to have been mainly responsible, although he saved himself by flight, whereas his fellow authors, Jonson and Chapman, found themselves in prison and in imminent danger of losing their ears. I do not think that the scandal arose on the performance of the play, but on its publication in the late autumn. The company did not appear at Court during the winter of 1605-6, but the ingenious Kirkham seems to have succeeded in transferring one of its new plays, Marston's Fawn, and possibly also Bussy D'Ambois, to Paul's, and appeared triumphantly before the Treasurer of the Chamber's paymaster the following spring as 'one of the Masters of the Children of Pawles'. Meanwhile the Blackfriars company went on acting, but it is to be inferred from the title-pages of its next group of plays, Marston's Sophonisba (1606), Sharpham's The Fleir (1607), and Day's Isle of Gulls (1606), that its misdemeanour had cost it the direct patronage of the Queen, and that it was now only entitled to call itself, not Children of the Queen's Revels, but Children of the Revels. Possibly the change of name also*