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Updated: June 6, 2025
I love Ned Alleyn, and like to think that Shakespeare got the Arcadia from him. For a moment let us turn from Shakespeare at this crisis in his life. Alleyn has left him and is paying the score. Marlowe remains where he fell. Nash has forgotten where he lodges, and so sets off with Peele to an ale-house in Pye Corner, where George is only too well known. Kempe and Cowley are sent home in baskets.
Those who are most familiar with the dramatic and poetic art of Christopher Marlowe and the histrionic art of Edward Alleyn are the least likely to underestimate the important influence which was exerted on the early Elizabethan drama by the illiterate but crafty and enterprising manager of these great artists, Philip Henslowe.
"He and Jonson be thick as thieves," said Henslowe; "and Chettle says that Will hath near done the book of a new play for the autumn a master fine thing! 'Romulus and Juliana, or something of that Italian sort, to follow Ben Jonson's comedy. Ned Alleyn played a sweet fool about Ben's comedy.
"What's to do?" said Carew. "Why, I've told ye what's to do. Ye've heard Will say, 'There is a tide leads on to fortune if ye take it at the flood'? Well, Master Alleyn, here's the tide, and at the flood. I have offered you an argosy. Will ye sail or stick in the mud? Ye'll never have such a chance again.
For, though still by name master-player with Henslowe and Alleyn, his business with them had come to be but little more than pocketing his share of the profits; and for the rest, nothing but to take Nick daily to and from St. Paul's, and to draw his wages week by week. Of those wages Nick saw never a penny: Carew took good care of that.
There is no more useful man in the theatre, he has said to "Signior Kempino" this very day, for touching up old plays; and Will is a plodding young fellow, too, if not over-brilliant. Ned Alleyn goes from tavern to tavern, picking out his men.
A marvel to all the "piperly make-plaies and make-bates," save one, is "famous Ned Alleyn;" for when money comes to him he does not drink till it be done, and already he is laying by to confound the ecclesiastics, who say hard things of him, by founding Dulwich College. "Not Roscius nor Æsope," said Tom Nash, who was probably in need of a crown at the time, "ever performed more in action."
"In the name of merry Will," he continued, "whom I never saw, though I have seen many of his comrades, as Alleyn, Hemmings, and so on, we will have a single catch, and one rouse about, and then to bed."
Collier's inaccuracies in regard to this letter, and says that it "certainly betrays no little ignorance, as 10l. in those days would have equalled about 60l. of our present money." "A strange youth," he adds, "calls on Mrs. Alleyn and asks the loan of 10l. as coolly as he would ask for as many pence!"
Webster, in speaking one day of a Philadelphia family which had thus kept in place, said that they reminded him of Simeon Alleyn, Vicar of Bray, in Old England, who steered his bark safely through four conflicting successive reigns. A bland gentleman, he was first a Papist, then a Protestant, next a Papist, and lastly a Protestant again. "He must have been at times," said Mr.
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