An Unrecorded Elizabethan Performance of Titus Andronicus

Summary

The early stage history of Titus Andronicus comes within the darkest period in the annals of Shakespearian drama. Little is known when, by whom and for whom the tragedy was performed. There is concrete evidence that it was acted five times in public theatres for London playgoers. Now, further fresh and conclusive evidence is available to prove that by January 1596 it had been produced at a private house in Rutland.

We may well start with the new record itself:

Le Jour de lan fut monstree la liberalité de ces bon[s gens] & principalem^t de Mad: la Contesse [Russell] car depuis le plus [grand] iusques au plus petit elle en donna bon tesmoignage, mesm[e] i'en puis dire quelque chose. Les commediens de Londres son[t] venus icy po^r en auoir leur pt. on les feit iour le soir [de] leur venue & le lendemain on les despecha

On a fait icy vne mascarade de linuention de Sir Edw: wingfild on a aussi ioué la tragedie de Titus Andronicus mais la monstre a plus valeu q le suiect.

This eyewitness report, registered in the terse style of a chronicle, was written down for the ubiquitous and omniscient, though gout-stricken, Anthony Bacon—which accounts for its having been preserved among his papers in Lambeth Palace Library. The body of this collection is made up of Anthony Bacon's correspondence, carried on in his function of secretary to the Earl of Essex. It includes many French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese letters written by agents in the pay of Essex's secret intelligence service. Even although Thomas Birch utilized some of the material for his Memoirs of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, these papers remain largely unknown and unused. Among them is the letter from which the above quotation has been made—a letter from Bacon's Gascon servant Jacques Petit.