ABSTRACT
In his survey of the twenty-four extant Tudor texts of plays 'offered for acting', in which the number of performers and the parts they will play are generally indicated on the title-page, David Bevington shows that once the itinerant tradition had been established, four, or occasionally five, seems to have been the accepted number of players in a troupe . In two examples he noted, printers even announced plays for four players when closer inspection reveals that they would have needed more to perform them. 1 Of Augustin de Rojas Villandrando's eight categories of contemporary Spanish itinerant, it is his middle category, the gangarilla, that sounds most like the typical English company throughout most of the sixteenth century.2 It consists of 'three or four men: one who can play the fool and a boy who plays the women's roles' . They charge each spectator a quarto, but are not too proud to accept payment in kind, 'a piece of bread, eggs, sardines, or any kind of odds ·and ends, which they put into a bag'. They sleep on the ground, and give performances 'in every farmyard'. Villandrando's categories range from the humble solo bululu, to full companies of sixteen, by 1602 genteel enough to travel by coach or litter, and no doubt gradations in some measure existed in England by the same
period. Although four remains a popular number in the later Tudor touring plays, six, seven or even eight begin to creep in after 1558, and by Clyomon and Clamydes (c. 1570), the number had risen to ten.3
