The First London Theatre II 
help of Edmond Tylney, Master of the Revels, who assisted in 
selecting the actors by appointment of her Majesty, a new com- 
pany was formed around this nucleus, consisting of twelve of 
the best actors of London, under her Majesty’s patronage, called 
the Queen’s Servants.® Thereafter they wore her livery and 
were given the rank of grooms of the chamber—the first instance 
of such recognition by royalty.® I shall later publish in extenso 
a license granted by the City to the Queen’s men, dated 28 Novem- 
ber, 1583, wherein we learn for the first time that the twelve 
chosen actors were “Roberte Willson, John Dutton, Rychard 
Tarleton, John Laneham, John Bentley, Thobye Mylles, John 
Towne, John Synger, Leonell Cooke, John Garland, John Adams, 
and Wyllyam Johnson,” and that their playing places were to be ° 
“at the Sygnes of the Bull in Busshoppesgate streete, and the 
synge of the Bell in gratioustreete and nowheare els win this 
Cyttye,” for the time being. This company was thereafter the 
favorite at Court until its dissolution about 1591. Its leader was 
Robert Wilson, to whom payments for their Court performances 
were regularly made. The principal rivals of it were the Ad- 
miral’s and the Chamberlain’s men, at the Curtain and the 
Theatre, as we now find. 
It has hitherto been supposed that the Queen’s men acted at 
the Theatre. No document to that effect is known. The new evi- 
dence, moreover, indicates that they did not, and that Burbage 
_was not connected with them. 
Before the organization of the Queen’s players, Burbage had 
already taken steps. He was a good organizer, and was not with- 
out support at Court. Around the remnants of the Leicester’s 
company still remaining with him after the Peckham trouble of 
1582, Burbage appears to have reorganized, under the patronage 
of Lord Hunsdon, cousin to the Queen. Lord Hunsdon’s players 
are first heard of at Court at the following Christmas season of 
1582-83. Then, in a well known account of the City’s trouble 
with players in 1584, dated June 18, preserved in Lansdown MSS. 
5 See the account in Stowe’s Chronicle (ed. Howes, 1615) under 1583; 
also contemporary records in Collier, I, 247. 
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