Sussex's Men - The Early 1590s

The Early 1590s

Sussex's Men ended a near-decade absence from Court with a performance there on 2 January 1592. At around this time they may have been connected with Christopher Marlowe and Thomas Kyd, though specific details have not survived.

It was in the winter of 1593–94, during an especially difficult epidemic of bubonic plague, that Sussex's Men achieved their greatest prominence and importance. Because of the plague, the London theatres were closed almost continuously for two years, from the summer of 1592 to the spring of 1594; during the cold months of winter, however, the plague tended to abate, and theatrical manager and promoter Philip Henslowe was able to open his Rose Theatre for truncated winter seasons in both years. In 1592–93, Lord Strange's Men were at the Rose; but the next year that company was touring the countryside, and Henslowe brought in Sussex's Men for a season running from December 26, 1593 to February 6, 1594. (Whether the death of the 4th Earl of Sussex in 1593, and the succession of his son Robert Radclyffe as 5th Earl, was significant in this is not known.)

Usually, the acting companies of the period owned their own plays, which they purchased outright from playwrights; Henslowe was unusual in that he owned some plays personally, and the acting troupes who worked with (or for) him could act those plays. In this way, Sussex's Men performed Marlowe's The Jew of Malta on February 4, 1594 — a play that has previously been in the repertory of Lord Strange's Men. In their six-week winter season at the Rose, Sussex's Men performed 30 times, giving 13 different plays at least once. Again, their repertory consisted mostly of anonymous and now-lost plays, like Richard the Confessor, King Lud, Abraham and Lot, and The Fair Maid of Italy — though they also performed the extant George a Greene (published 1599) four times.