ABSTRACT
1636 was a year of virulent summer plague and the court removed early to Hampton Court. The Venetian ambassador of the time, Anzolo Correr, was sanguine about the danger of infection, writing: 'In a city like London, which contains hundreds of thousands of souls, there is nothing dreadful in hearing that fifty or sixty persons die of plague in a week', which is possibly true so long as one is not amongst those afflicted by it (CSPV XXIII, p. 570). Correr noted that London was also stricken with drought, no rain having fallen in three months and that 'the heat, which does not usually trouble this country over much, has become very great', a combination which must have made the capital almost unbearable (CSPV XXIII, p. 570). On 17th May, Pembroke signed a warrant permitting the players to accompany the king on his progress and to perform in halls nearby as they travelled, which would have removed them, if not their families, from contagion. The warrant names some of the lesser actors 'together wt Tenne more or thereabouts of their fellows' (MSC II iii, p. 378). Bentley makes the reasonable suggestion that the other 10 are the sharers, their names already known. A later record accords privilege to another travelling group from arrest or molestation.
