13th May, 1592 - The Jew of Malta

Here's what Lord Strange's Men performed at the Rose playhouse on this day, 424 years ago...

Henslowe writes: R at the Jewe of malta the 11 of maye 1592 ... xxxiiij^s

In modern English: Received at The Jew of Malta, 13^th May, 1592 ... 34 shillings

Caravaggio's portrait of the Grand

Master of the Knights of Malta,

1607-8.

Today, Lord Strange's Men performed their satirical comic tragedy The Jew of Malta again. You can read more about this play in the blog entry for 26th February.

Normally, the company has been performing The Jew of Malta approximately once every fortnight. However, today they revived it after only a week. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the result was the weakest box office that the play has received thus far. As with some of the previous entries, it's hard not to conclude that overly-frequent performances of plays caused their audiences to decline.

• Saturday, 26th February - 50 shillings
• Friday, 10th March - 56 shillings
• Saturday, 18th March - 39 shillings
• Tuesday, 4th April, 43 shillings
• Tuesday,  18th April, 48 shillings and sixpence
• Friday, 5th May, 41 shillings
• Saturday, 13th May, 34 shillings

What's next?

There will be no blog entry tomorrow because 14th May was a Sunday in 1592. Henslowe's Diary ... as a Blog! will thus return on 15th May.

Henslowe links

• Transcript of this page of the Diary (from W.W. Greg's 1904 edition)
• Facsimile of this page of the Diary (from the Henslowe-Alleyn Digitisation Project)

Comments?

Did I make a mistake? Do you have a question? Have you anything to add? Please post a comment below!