Thomas North: Playwright
My letter-to-the-editor response on North's payment for a play in the "Times Literary Supplement"
On December 13, The Times Literary Supplement published an article by June Schlueter and myself—Murder Will Speak: The author of the first Hamlet and the real-life assassination of the Duke of Urbino—which credits Thomas North with authorship for the “Ur-Hamlet,” the original 1588 source-play for Shakespeare’s well-known tragedy. Also, see my Substack post on it here.
In the article, we note that Thomas North received a payment for a Leicester’s Men play, which elicited a not unpleasant response from John Critchley who noted that the exact payment and reward North received were equal to ten marks and five marks, respectively. Our response (shown below) was brief, and I add some more details below that confirm North was both a translator and a playwright:
Although we did not have room to elaborate, it is a fact that multiple records reveal that Thomas North wrote plays. By 1560, the year North turned 25, Jasper Heywood placed him at the top of a list of the best tragedians at the Inns of Court. Similarly, in 1576, George North, a likely cousin of Thomas, wrote a handwritten manuscript on rebellions manuscript in which compliments Thomas North for both “invention and translation,” clearly distinguishing invention from translation, and he especially noted that Thomas, “for copy, eloquency, and good method may claim palm and place with the best.”[1] In Elizabethan England, copy, in the literary sense, meant richness of words. The discovery of this manuscript, originally kept at the North family library, elicited a front-page story in The New York Times because it proved to be a significant source for Shakespeare's plays. (Of course, in our view, it was Thomas North who was using this manuscript for the source-plays that Shakespeare later adapted.)
Records also indicate that North was writing plays for the Earl of Leicester’s Men, from the 1570s at least to the early 1580s. (Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester, was North’s patron and a good friend of his older brother, Roger, 2nd Lord North.) Roger’s household account book mentions his younger brother, Thomas, at times linking him with Leicester’s Men and at times documenting payments to both Thomas and the theater troupe after a performance.[2] For 9 and 10 November 1578, Roger records paying both Leicester’s players and his brother the same amount, 40 shillings, after the performance of a comedy.[3] In the following January, Roger documents Thomas’s bringing apparel for minstrels and a player to London.[4]
In one telling receipt, in 1580, Roger pays both Thomas and Leicester’s Men for a play performed at court, giving Thomas the traditional fee and reward, down to the very penny, granted to playwrights and producers of court plays.
Specifically, Lord North gave the theater troupe 40 shillings, his standard payment for a performance, and Thomas £3.6s.8d. (Stowe MS 774, pt. 1, 126v). This followed an earlier payment, recorded on the previous leaf, to Thomas of £6.13s.4d. (Stowe MS 774, pt. 1, 125v). These two specific payments—£6.13s.4d. with an additional reward of £3.6s.8d.—are the exact amounts given to the playwrights and producers of court plays, including Sebastian Westcott, Richard Farrant, William Elderton, Richard Edwards, William Hunnis, Richard Mulcaster, Robert Wilson, John Lyly, Anthony Munday, and William Rowley. Each of them received his fees of £6.13s.4d. for his play, and some also earned a reward of £3.6s.8d. Also, in his magisterial British Drama 1533–1642, Martin Wiggins indicates that within the “drama-related expenses” for the queen’s 1574 progress “the authorities of Bristol paid [Thomas] Churchyard £6.13s.4d. for writing the text.” Likewise, in 1591, Robert Greene notoriously sold his play of Orlando twice: first to the Queen’s Men for a fee of £6.13s.4d., then to the Admiral’s Men for the same price. Finally, the Revels records a payment to Shakespeare, Kemp, and Burbage for two comedies performed at court at Greenwich on 26 and 28 December 1594 for £13.6s.8d. with a reward of £6.13s.4d. in total. This again amounts to a payment of £6.13s.4d. and a reward of £3.6s.8d. for each play. As Lord North places both the payment for Leicester’s Men’s play performance and North’s reward together in a single receipt and adds them up, there is no doubt the payment was for North’s work on that court play.
Indeed, between 1573 and 1583, Leicester’s Men’s performed at court at least eight other times, each warranting a payment of £6.13s.4d., and seven of the eight generating an additional reward of £3.6s.8d.[5] This includes the performance of Philemon and Philecia (1574), the source play for The Two Gentlemen of Verona (see below).
Not one of these records identifies the playwright-producer who collected the money. But, as we see above, with Leicester’s Men’s performance at court in June 1580—which was a play that Lord North himself was presenting—that playwright was identified: Thomas North.
Why did court plays receive such a peculiarly exact sum for payments? We discuss this in our letter to the editor in The Times Literary Supplement (above). The tradition began with Henry VIII, when the king typically paid his court dramatist and entertainment manager, the Lord of Misrule, 20 nobles (i.e., £6.13s.4d.—which is also equal to ten marks) for his Christmas season productions. Although no monarch coined another noble after 1544, this amount remained a traditional payment for a new play at court into the Jacobean era, eventually augmented by a reward of ten nobles (or five marks: £3.6s.8d.). This reward became customary in the 1570s. Interestingly, early modern payments in many different categories often followed strict traditional guidelines. For example, dowries and feudal fines were also likewise paid according to values of marks and nobles. And this continued throughout the sixteenth century and later.
[1] A transcript of George North’s treatise is in Dennis McCarthy and June Schlueter, “A Brief Discourse of Rebellion and Rebels” by George North: A Newly Uncovered Manuscript Source for Shakespeare’s Plays (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer in association with the British Library, 2018). See p. 8. The manuscript is in the British Library, Portland Papers Vol. DXX (29/327), Add. MS 70520.
[2] Roger North, Lord North’s Household Book, 1576–1589, British Library, Stowe MS 774, pt. 1, fols 79v, 80, 126v; pt. 2, 40.
[3] Roger North, Lord North’s Household Book, 1576–1589 (9–10 November 1578), pt. 1, 80: “given my L. of Lesters plaiers 40s … to my brother 40s.” See also fols 79v, 126v; pt. 2, 40.
[4] Roger North, Lord North’s Household Book, 1576–1589: (11–13 January 1578–9), pt. 1, 85v. Roger writes “to my brother going to London in money viii li beside apparel to minstrels ii s to player ii s vi d.” Roger’s use of the words in money and beside necessarily confirms that he considered the apparel for the minstrels (and likely player) as part of North’s gift. As an example, for Tuesday, 29 June 1585, Roger writes, “Sent my brother to London by the carrier on Tuesday velvet hose, a satin gown guarded w[ith] velvet and a mare cost v li and in ready money v li” pt. 2, 93v. Again, here Roger obviously considers the gown, hose, and mare as part of a gift given to Thomas—along with the “money.”
[5] Martin Wiggins, British Drama 1533–1642: A Catalogue, Vol. 2: 1567–1589 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 99, 102, 109, 118, 157, 257–8, 311–12. The Revels Account combined the payments for Leicester’s Men for two 1573 plays at court—Predor and Lucia and Mamillia (99, 102). The one play that did not receive a reward of £3.6s.8d—The History of the Collier (1576)—received what was called a “special reward” of £10 (157). Also, P[h]anecia (1574) was played twice at court in 1574, receiving for the first performance £10 (i.e., £6.13s.4d. and £3.6s.8d) and £6.13s.4d. for the second performance (118). Other troupes also received these two payments for performances at court (106, 115, 160, 162–3, 212–15, 221–3, 244–9, 308, 310). See also Martin Wiggins, British Drama 1533–1642: A Catalogue, Vol. 5: 1603–1608 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 36, 78, 218; John Tucker Murray, English Dramatic Companies, 1558–1642 (London: Constable and Company, 1910), 1:106; Charles William Wallace, The Evolution of the English Drama Up To Shakespeare (Berlin: Georg Reimer, 1912), 219, 221–4. Wallace records the reward values as lxvi s viiid , which equals £3.6s.8d.