the players to
perform there, and paid all their expenses. The alleged tradition,
recently promulgated for the first time by the owners of Wilton, that _As
You Like It_ was performed on the occasion, is unsupported by
contemporary evidence.

{232b} The grant is transcribed in the New Shakspere Society's
_Transactions_, 1877-9, Appendix ii., from the Lord Chamberlain's papers
in the Public Record Office, where it is now numbered 660. The number
allotted it in the _Transactions_ is obsolete.

{233a} A contemporary copy of this letter, which declared the Queen's
players acting at the Fortune and the Prince's players at the Curtain to
be entitled to the same privileges as the King's players, is at Dulwich
College (cf. G. F. Warner's _Catalogue of the Dulwich Manuscripts_, pp.
26-7). Collier printed it in his _New Facts_ with fraudulent additions,
in which the names of Shakespeare and other actors figured.

{233b} Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps in his _Outlines_, i. 213, cites a royal
order to this effect, but gives no authority, and I have sought in vain
for the document at the Public Record Office, at the British Museum, and
elsewhere. But there is no reason to doubt the fact that Shakespeare and
his fellow-actors took, as Grooms of the Chamber, part in the ceremonies
attending the Constable's visit to London. In the unprinted accounts of
Edmund Tilney, master of the revels, for the year October 1603 to October
1604, charge is made for his three days' attendance with four men to
direct the entertainments 'at the receaving of the Constable of Spayne'
(Public Record Office, _Declared Accounts_, Pipe Office Roll 2805). The
magnificent festivities culminated in a splendid banquet given in the
Constable's honour by James I at Whitehall on Sunday, August 19/29--the
day on which the treaty was signed. In the morning all the members of
the royal household accompanied the Constable in formal procession from
Somerset House. After the banquet, at which the earls of Pembroke and
Southampton acted as stewards, there was a ball, and the King's guests
subsequently witnessed exhibitions of bear baiting, bull baiting, rope
dancing, and feats of horsemanship. (Cf. Stow's _Chronicle_, 1631, pp.
845-6, and a Spanish pamphlet, _Relacion de la jornada del exc__mo__
Condestabile de Castilla_, etc., Antwerp, 1604, 4to, which was summarised
in Ellis's _Original Letters_, 2nd series, vol. iii. pp. 207-215, and was
partly translated in Mr. W