e Theatre and
Curtain. All the Lords [of the Privy Council] agreed
thereunto saving my Lord Chamberlain and Mr.
Vice-Chamberlain. But we obtained a letter to suppress them
all. Upon the same night I sent for the Queen's Players [at
the Theatre?] and my Lord Arundel's Players [at the
Curtain?] and they all willingly obeyed the Lords's letters.
The chiefest of Her Highness's Players advised me to send
for the owner of the Theatre [James Burbage[97]], who was a
stubborn fellow, and to bind him. I did so. He sent me word
he was my Lord of Hundson's man, and that he would not come
at me; but he would in the morning ride to my lord.

[Footnote 97: This could not have been Hide, as usually stated. Hide
had nothing to do with the management of the Theatre, and was not "my
Lord of Hunsdon's man." Hide's connection with the Theatre as sketched
in this chapter shows the absurdity of such an interpretation of the
document.]

The natural inference from all this is that the Queen's Men and Lord
Arundel's Men were then playing _outside the city_ where they could be
controlled only by "the Lords's Letters"; that the Queen's Men were
occupying the Theatre, and that James Burbage was (as we know) not a
member of that company, but merely stood to them in the relation of
"owner of the Theatre."

What Burbage meant by calling himself "my Lord of Hunsdon's man" is
not clear. Mr. Wallace contends that when Leicester's Men were
dissolved, Burbage organized "around the remnants of Leicester's
Company" a troupe under the patronage of Lord Hunsdon, and that this
troupe, and not the Queen's Men, occupied the Theatre thereafter.[98]
But we hear of Hunsdon's Men at Ludlow in July, 1582; and we find them
presenting a play at Court on December 27, 1582. Since Leicester's
troupe is recorded as acting at Court as late as February 10, 1583, it
seems unlikely that Mr. Wallace's theory as to the origin of Hunsdon's
Men is true. It may be, however, that after the dissolution of
Leicester's Men, Burbage associated himself with Hunsdon's Men, and it
may be that he allowed that relatively unimportant company to occupy
the Theatre for a short time. Hunsdon's Men seem to have been mainly a
traveling troupe; Mr. Murray states that notices of them "occur
frequently in the provinces," but we hear almost nothing of them in
London. Indeed, at the time of the trouble described by Fleetwood,
Hunsdon's Men were