Sir William Davenant, the Court Masque, and the English Seventeen ...

In addition to the King’s Men, Christopher Beeston managed a company at another indoor theatre, the Cockpit, also known as the Phoenix after a renovation which is believed to have been made by Inigo Jones in 1618.³⁹ When Christopher died in 1640, his son William took over. However, William Beeston offered Henry Herbert a play which he refused to license because it had political overtones and allusions to the king’s domestic policies. Beeston was sent to the Marshalsea prison on 4 May on the warrant of Philip Herbert, the Lord Chamberlain, and his company, known as Beeston’s Boys, was forbidden to act for several days. The Lord Chamberlain then officially offered Davenant the post of manager on 27 June 1640 and ordered the company to obey him, which suggests Davenant was already showing an interest in the theatrical side of presenting plays. He was there for almost a year, and although, unfortunately, nothing has come to light of his time there, it would have given him first-hand knowledge of the workings of a commercial theatre, and he was able to use the theatre for his productions in the Interregnum.

The other companies appear to have had no permanent homes. Queen Henrietta’s Company played sometimes at the Cockpit, sometimes at Salisbury Court, another indoor house, which opened in 1629, where a kind of training company of boys, called the King’s Revels formed. An adult company, the Lady Elizabeth’s Players, formed in 1622, also appeared at times there and also at the Red Bull.⁴⁰ All these companies could be called to act at court, but the King’s Men appeared most often. For example, during Davenant’s time at court, they presented twenty-two plays over the winter of 1636/1637, fourteen for the winter of 1637/1638, with another twenty-three at court, plus one at Blackfriars for the queen, in the winter of 1638/1639, twenty-one plays the following year, and possibly sixteen in the last year before the closure.

The Blackfriars was becoming not only the most prestigious theatre in London but the principal and most profitable of the two theatres managed by the King’s Men. For someone with a wish to succeed in the theatre Davenant was in the right place at the right time. Most of his pre-Commonwealth plays were put on by the King’s Men, at the Blackfriars, and were often given a repeat performance in the Cockpit-in-court, except for The News from Plymouth, which was aimed at a more plebeian audience and was shown only at the Globe.⁴¹