Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester - Patronage - Learning, Theatre, The Arts, and Literature

Learning, Theatre, The Arts, and Literature

Apart from their legal function the Inns of Court were the Tudor equivalents of gentlemen's clubs. In 1561, grateful for favours he had done them, the Inner Temple admitted Dudley as their most privileged member, their "Lord and Governor". He was allowed to build his own apartments on the premises and organised grand festivities and performances in the Temple. As Chancellor of Oxford University Dudley was highly committed, if somewhat authoritarian; he frowned upon the dangerous play of football and the extravagant clothing of students. Leicester enforced the Thirty-nine Articles and the oath of royal supremacy at Oxford, and obtained from the Queen an incorporation by Act of Parliament for the university. He was also instrumental in founding the official Oxford University Press, and installed the pioneer of international law, Alberico Gentili, and the exotic theologian, Antonio del Corro, at Oxford. Over del Corro's controversial case he even sacked the university's Vice-Chancellor.

Around 100 books were dedicated to Robert Dudley during Elizabeth's reign. In 1564/1567 Arthur Golding dedicated his popular translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses to the Earl. Dudley took a special interest in translations, which were seen as a means to popularise learning among "all who could read." He was also a history enthusiast, and in 1559 suggested to the tailor John Stow to become a chronicler (as Stow recalled in 1604). Robert Dudley's interest in the theatre was manifold, from academic plays at Oxford to the protection of the children's companies and their respective masters against hostile bishops and landlords. From at least 1559 he had his own company of players, and in 1574 he obtained for them the first royal patent that was ever issued to actors so that they could tour the country unmolested by local authorities. The Earl also kept a separate company of musicians who in 1586 played before the King of Denmark; with them travelled William Kempe, "the Lord Leicester's jesting player".

Leicester possessed one of the largest collections of paintings in Elizabethan England, being the first great private collector. He was a principal patron of Nicholas Hilliard, as well as interested in all aspects of Italian culture. The Earl's circle of scholars and men of letters included, among others, his nephew Philip Sidney, the astrologer and Hermeticist John Dee, his secretaries Edward Dyer and Jean Hotman, as well as John Florio and Gabriel Harvey. Through Harvey, Edmund Spenser found employment at Leicester House on the Strand, the Earl's palatial town house, where he wrote his first works of poetry. Many years after Leicester's death Spenser wistfully recalled this time in his Prothalamion, and in 1591 he remembered the late Earl with his poem The Ruins of Time.