The acting companies of Shakespeare’s England, in a two-volume 1910 history

Plays in Shakespeare’s England were put on by companies of players, and John Tucker Murray set out to write their history. Published in London by Constable in 1910, it follows the troupes across these years in two volumes: the first on the London companies, the second on the companies of the provinces, the strolling players who took their plays from town to town.

It is a reference work as much as a narrative, and its printed folding tables still open out, among them a detailed comparison of casts set out in many columns.

This set has a scholarly history of its own. Both volumes carry 1923 inscriptions attributed to Robert Adger Law of the University of Texas, and the ownership stamps of Giles E. Dawson, the Folger curator, who added his own dated inscription to Volume II in 1959. In 1958 Dawson was looking for records of strolling players in Kent, and R. Howarth of Folkestone Public Libraries answered him by airletter, pointing him to Tudor and Stuart town accounts and the 1911 Records of Lydd. That letter is still in the book, with a typed note of a payment at Faversham to Lord Hunsdon’s players. Dawson published an edition of Kent’s theatrical records in 1965, but whether he used these papers is not proven.