ABSTRACT
The London livery companies were significant patrons of the small professional groups, hiring them annually to perform at functions like election feasts from about 1400 well into Elizabeth’s reign. The Goldsmiths, the Mercers and the Merchant Taylors all hired theatre companies at different times. The business was profitable enough for him to sue a long-standing colleague, Henry Walton, a stage carpenter with whom he had worked on the Greenwich project as well as the building of his Finsbury theatre. When Rastell was in France, he seems to have left the costume business in Walton’s hands, and Walton had failed to return everything in good order. The scripts may have been for hire by aspiring groups, who could then have produced the plays in Rastell’s theatre, dressing the actors in Rastell’s costumes.
