New light on the strolling performers Thomas Peadle and Thomas Cosby, 1639–1650

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe present article brings to light new information about Thomas Peadle, a representative of the younger generation of a late 16th- and early 17th-century family of strolling entertainers, whose career has been very imperfectly documented. Archival materials relating to his marriage in Amsterdam in 1639, his presence at Delft in 1640, and his appearance at The Hague in 1641 suggest that Peadle took his troupe on a tour of The Low Countries in the 1630s and early 1640s. Further evidence of his theatrical activities on the continent is contained in an agreement for co-operation concluded at Paris on 22 October 1649 between Peadle and Thomas Cosby, a fellow rope dancer, on the one hand, and Florent Marchand, a French ‘water-spouter’, on the other. They continued their joint performances in England, where their co-operation ended in 1650, culminating in the English partners’ ruthless exposure of Marchand’s ‘trade secrets’.KEYWORDS: Thomas PeadleThomas Cosbyrope dancersFlorent Marchandcross-Channel artistic exchanges Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 Cohn, Shakespeare in Germany, lxxxii – lxxxiii, lxxxviii; Meissner, Die englischen Comoedianten, 40–43; Herz, Englische Schauspieler, 36, 52–53; Bentley, Jacobean and Caroline Stage, 521–23; Harry R. Hoppe, ‘English Actors at Ghent’, 309; and Bachrach, ‘Leiden en de “Strolling Players”’, 33–4. Philip Butterworth has mistakenly assumed that ‘[t]he earliest records that concern the Peadle family’ are dated April 1609: see Magic, 30–31.2 Murray, English Dramatic Companies, 342, 346.3 Bawcutt, Control and Censorship, 309–10. On Cecily Peadle’s ‘performative legitimacy’ as leader of the troupe, see Mueller, ‘Touring, Women’, 60–61.4 Eccles, ‘Elizabethan Actors’, 300.5 Murray, 253–54.6 Gemeente Amsterdam. Stadsarchief [City Archives]. Huwelijksintekeningen van de Kerk, inv. 452, page 258. Thomas’s year of birth, 1612, made him the elder brother of Cornelius, baptized on 8 August 1617, and Anne, baptized on 31 January 1621: see Bentley, 522–23.7 Cecily Peadle, possibly the company manager in August 1631, was left unmentioned in the December 1639 Coventry record.8 Bentley, 522, has stated that Peadle ‘had been appearing with his father’s troupe for some time [my italics] before his name got into the Coventry records’, i.e. before 24 December 1639.9 Archief Delft. Doopboeken Nieuwe Kerk, folio 43 v.10 Vander Motten and Roscam Abbing, ‘Seventeenth-Century English Rope Dancers in the Low Countries’, 13 and passim; and Vander Motten and Roscam Abbing, ‘Seventeenth-Century English Rope Dancers in the Netherlands’.11 Gemeentearchief Den Haag. Oud Archief. Registers van minuten, 201, dd. 27 April 1641. I owe thanks to Ms Saskia Noot, The Hague City Archives, for having supplied me with a scan of this document.12 Harry R. Hoppe has pointed out that ‘[t]he outbreak of the Thirty Years War in 1620 probably drove many troupes that customarily toured Germany into the Low Countries; and in the 1640’s the Civil War in England must have driven others to the Continent’: see ‘English Acting Companies’, 29. In the 1630s, the presence of actors such as Robert Reynolds, Edward Pudsey, John Butler, John Payne, and Robert Archer has been attested to in Amsterdam (December 1636), Haarlem (October 1639), The Hague (January 1632 and October 1639), Leeuwarden (July 1635), Leiden (May 1638), and Utrecht (December 1633 and January 1634): see Riewald, ‘The English Actors’, 157–78.13 The residence of the King’s notaries in the heart of 17th-century Paris: see Jégaden, ‘La Communauté des Notaires’.14 The French original reads: ‘dont ils s’exercent et meslent [mèlent] journellement’’. Alan Howe has pointed out that the expression ‘se mesler de quelque chose’ may mean both ‘to make of something one’s profession or occupation’ and ‘to look after something’. If ‘se mêler’ were mentioned in isolation, the verb might mean that Peadle and Cosby had strictly managerial roles, without necessarily appearing on the stage themselves. But the addition of the verb ‘s’exercer’ leaves no doubt about their ‘active participation in their productions’: see ‘English Actors in Paris’, 132.15 Archives Nationales, Paris. Minutes et repertoires. MC/ET/I/124. Association, 22 Octobre 1649. I owe thanks to Ms Valérie De Wulf for having made a scan of this document available. I am providing a near-complete translation, leaving out only two or three of the formulaic closing phrases (indicated by three dots). For the sake of comprehensibility, I have divided the hard-to-decipher text into sentences and added punctuation marks (completely lacking in the original), clarified a few passages between square brackets, omitted one or two synonymous words, and modernized and capitalized the spelling of place names. Parisian parish and street names are italicized but have remained untranslated. I have also indicated, between round brackets, two or three illegible words.16 Vander Motten and Roscam Abbing, ‘Seventeenth-Century English Rope Dancers in the Netherlands’, 106.17 See Astington, ‘William Vincent’; Bawcutt, ‘William Vincent, Alias Hocus Pocus’; and Vander Motten, ‘The Mountebank Johannes Michael Philo’.18 For a late seventeenth-century example, see Vander Motten, ‘Jacob Hall’.19 Part of such fine was often destined for the benefit of the poor of the town or city where performances were given but not, however, in this case.20 Highfill, Burnim, and Langhans, A Biographical Dictionary, 1.21 A Register of English Theatrical Documents, 573.22 Bawcutt, Control and Censorship, 293.23 Hotson, 21–23; and Milhous and Hume, ‘New Light’.24 The information on Speede and André is based on Alan Howe, ‘English Actors in Paris’; and Howe, Jurgens, and Chauleur, 193–200.25 Howe, ‘English Actors in Paris’, 137; and Hotson, 21.26 In works on the subject, his first name is universally misspelled as ‘Floram’ instead of ‘Florent’, the form recorded in the 1649 notarial act.27 In a letter dated 11 March 1640, Descartes suspected that Manfredé ‘doit avoir un trou sous le menton … et c’est par là qu’il fait passer ces liqueurs’ [must have a hole under his chin, through which he passes these liquors]: see Cousin, ed., Oeuvres de Descartes, 211.28 Solomon, Public Welfare, 39–40, 60–66, 80; and Mazauric, Savoirs et philosophie, chapter 3.29 A General Collection of Discourses; and Another Collection of Philosophical Conferences.30 The French original had appeared in the Quatrième Centurie (Paris, 1641), which I have not been able to consult. The English translation is a condensed version of the text which had appeared in the Recueil Général des Questions Traitées és Conférences du Bureau d’Adresse, 377–400. For an (incomplete) reprint, see: Mauret, ed., Le Beuveur d’Eau.31 Power, Experimental Philosophy, 72–76. On Henry Power, see Johns, ODNB, accessed 17 June 2023.32 OED: ‘I, 1a: Brazil: the name of the hard brownish-red wood of an East Indian tree … from which dyers obtain a red colour’.33 One of the Thomason Tracts, the British Library copy reproduced in EEBO is defective: two leaves (A3v-A4r) are missing; and A3r and B1r are misnumbered as pages 3 and 6, respectively. A transcript of the complete text is included in Wilson and Caulfield, The Book of Wonderful Character, 126–30. This work has served as a basis for quotations from, and complete reproductions of, the text in many 19th- and 20th-century works on magic, illusionism, and the history of the circus.34 Another Collection of Philosophical Conferences, 345–46. According to the Recueil Général, ‘il ne s’est passé iour depuis six semaines qu’il ne s’y soit trouvé plus de quatre cens personnes’ (379–80). The figures vary and may be no more than an estimate but the crowd size seems to have been comparable to that of a theatre audience.35 It was entered as ‘a sheet of paper’ in the Stationers’ Register on 21 June: see A Transcript, 346.36 Wilson and Caulfield have likewise suggested that Peadle and Cosby ‘had probably not received the share of the profits to which they thought themselves entitled’ (126).37 Hyder E. Rollins observed long ago that by April 1653, the royalist news-book Mercurius Democritus declared that ‘puppet-plays and rope-dancing had become so common, so stale, that tired by the very monotony of these entertainments audiences were growing scarce, to the consequent impoverishment of the actors’. By the early 1650s, the authorities were ‘gradually adopting a more lenient policy’, though not an entirely permissive attitude, toward rope-dancing and drolls: see ‘A Contribution’, 310.38 Rollins cites the example of the dancer Robert Cox, who in 1653 was hired by the rope- and sword-dancers to ‘present a well-known jig, or droll’ but was ‘betrayed by two jealous rivals’. As a result, ‘the [Red Bull] theatre was raided … and Cox imprisoned’. Stage artists themselves, it is unlikely that Peadle and Cosby, however deep-seated their resentment, had weaponized the government against their opponent: see ‘A Contribution’, 307, 311.39 Golden-Lane was in the immediate vicinity of the rebuilt Fortune playhouse, the inside of which had been dismantled and rendered ‘unusable for dramatic purpose’ by parliamentary soldiers in March 1649: see Adams, Shakespearean Playhouses, 291.40 de Beer, ed., 26–27.41 Rollins, 315–16.42 The literature on the subject is extensive. For an overview relating to the Low Countries, see Riewald, ‘The English Actors in the Low Countries’. See also Limon, Gentlemen of a Company.43 Leathers, British Entertainers in France, 3–7, 167.44 Vander Motten and Roscam Abbing, ‘Seventeenth-Century English Rope Dancers in the Low Countries’, 26.