ABSTRACT
In November 1605, the entire country was rocked by the news of the Gunpowder Plot. How this affected the theatres, their players and their audiences is unknown. The King's Men had been on tour during the autumn, plague in London having once again obliged them to seek their living in the country, so they were free, perhaps, from the suspicions, fear and loathing which gripped the capital. They were back in London in December and, oddly, despite his own fears and his personal attendance at and interest in the questioning of conspirators and witnesses. James still had the players called to Whitehall for the entertainments during the Christmas season. The King's Men presented 10 plays and the Prince's six, although the titles are unknown. First performance of Volpone, a play in which Lowin certainly took part, seems to have been in February or March 1605(6), which means, according to Richard Dutton, that Jonson 'must have written the play immediately in the wake of the Gunpowder Plot and at a time when some of those implicated in the plot (like the Jesuit, Father Henry Garnet) were paying the ghastly penalty'. 1 Given the wide net of suspicion spreading over the country, the players must have been anxious lest their association with Jonson would put them, too, under investigation.
