THE QUEEN’S REQUIREMENTS 111 
The patronage of the companies named was modeled after the 
patronage extended to companies in England by the nobility un- 
der Elizabeth. Indeed, the patents by Landgraf Moritz to Brown 
and Kingman! read like English commissions adapted to German 
conditions. In a word, then, these traveling troops of English 
‘actors in Germany were established on the general plan of the 
patronage extended to the companies playing in the London pub- 
lic theatres. These public-theatre companies of this period were 
composed of actors. There was among them only an occasional 
dancer, and a rarer musician. 
On the other hand, the company set up at the court of the 
Duke of Stettin, composed of actors, musicians, and dancers, and 
apparently not traveling about like the other English-German 
troops, but remaining at the court, not patronized moreover 
merely by a protecting commission but maintained at court as a 
charge on the ducal exchequer, seems modeled more after the 
private establishment of Blackfriars. Whether the Duke brought 
the troop directly from London, as seems not unlikely from Ha- 
gius’s calling them “die von E. F. G. bestellte Comedianten,”? or 
whether he took up with actors, musicians, and dancers already 
on the continent, a point of difference from the other instances is 
that he intended them for and, as Hagius’s letters show, used 
them for the pleasure and entertainment of his court and friends. 
It looks like the case of a small prince overdoing great royalty,— 
such as those numerous, almost universal, European exaggerated 
imitations in dress, language, and customs inspired half a century 
‘later by the dazzling court of Louis XIV. 
I think Herr Meyer quite right, so far as he goes, in saying 
that the Duke acquired while in London a special fondness for 
the English theatre? But from the chief theatrical interest of 
the Duke as shown by the Diary and from the kind of company 
*Published by Konnecke in Zeit- 
schrift fiir Vergleichende Littera- 
turgeschichte und Renaissance Lit- 
teratur (Neue Folge. Berlin.), I. 
*See letter published by C. F. 
Meyer in Shakespeare-Jahrbuch 
(1902), XXXVIII, 200, with Mey- 
ers’s view, 201. 
Zur Zeit dieses Londoner Auf- 
enthalts geschah es denn wohl auch, 
dass der Herzog eine lebhafte Vor- 
liebe fiir das englische Theatre 
fasste, die ihn dann spaterhin ver- 
anlasste, englische Komddianten 
und Musiker an seinen eignen Hof 
zu ziehen und mit grossem Kosten- 
aufwand lange daselbst zu unter- 
halten—C. F. Meyer, Englische 
Komédianten am Hofe des Herzogs 
Philipp Julius von Pommern-W ol- 
225 
