HENSLOWE, PHILIP (d. 1616)

This article appears in Volume V13, Page 303 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: HEG-HIG

HENSLOWE, PHILIP (d. 1616) , English theatrical manager, was the son of Edmund Henslowe of Lindfield, Sussex, master of the game in Ashdown Forest and Broil Park. He was originally a servant in the employment of the bailiff to Viscount Montague, whose property included Montague

House

HOUSE
HOUSE (O. Eng. hiss, a word common to Teutonic languages, cf. Dut. huis, Ger. Haus; in
Gothic
- GOTHIC
it is only found in gudhiss, a temple; it may be ultimately connected with the root of " hide," conceal)

in Southwark, and his duties led him to settle there before 1577. He subsequently married the bailiff's widow, and, with the fortune he got with her, he developed into a clever business man and became a consider-able owner of Southwark property. He started his connexion with the stage when, on the 24th of March 1584, he bought land near what is now the southern end of Southwark Bridge, on which stood the Little Rose playhouse, afterwards rebuilt as the Rose. Successive companies played in it under Henslowe's

financial

FINANCIAL

management between 1592 and 1603. The theatre at Newington Butts was also under him in 1594. A share of the

control

CONTROL (Fr. contrdle, older form contre rolle, from Med. Lat. contra-rotulus, a counter roll or copy of a document used to check the original; there is no instance in English of the use of " control " in this, its literal, meaning)

in the

Swan

theatre, which like the Rose was on the Bankside, fell to Henslowe before the close of the 16th century. With the actor Edward Alleyn, who married his step-daughter Joan Woodward, he built in Golden Lane, Cripplegate Without, the Fortune Playhouse, opened in November 1600. In December of 1594, they had secured the Paris Garden, a place for

bear

-baiting, on the Bankside, and in 1604 they bought the office of master of the royal game of bears, bulls and mastiffs from the holder, and obtained a patent. Alleyn sold his share to Henslowe in February 161o, and three years later Henslowe formed a new partnership with Jacob Meade and built the

Hope

HOPE, ANTHONY
HOPE, THOMAS (c. 1770-1831)

playhouse,
designed for stage performances as well as

bull

and

bear

-baiting, and managed by Meade.
In Henslowe's theatres were first produced many plays by the famous Elizabethan dramatists. What'is known as " Henslowe's Diary " contains some accounts referring to Ashdown Forest between 1576 and 1581, entered by John Henslowe, while the later entries by Philip Henslowe from 1592 to 1609 are those which throw light on the theatrical matters of the time, and which have been subjected to much controversial criticism as a result of injuries done to the manuscript. " Henslowe's Diary " passed into the hands of Edward Alleyn, and thence into the Library of Dulwich College, where the manuscript remained intact for more than a hundred and fifty years. In 178o Malone tried to borrow it, but it had been mislaid; in 1790 it was discovered and given into his charge. He was then at

work

WORK

on his Variorum Shakespeare. Malone had a transcript made of certain portions, and collated it with the

original

ORIGINAL

; and this transcript, with various notes and corrections by Malone, is now in the Dulwich Library. An abstract of this transcript he also published with his Variorum Shakespeare. The MS. of the diary was eventually returned to the library in 1812 by Malone's executor. In 184o it was lent to J. P. Collier, who in 1845 printed for the Shakespeare Society what purported to be a full edition, but it was afterwards shown by.G. F. Warner (Catalogue of the Dulwich Library, 1881) that a number of forged interpolations have been made, the responsibility for which rests on Collier.
The complicated history of the forgeries and their detection has been exhaustively treated in Walter W. Greg's edition of Henslowe's Diary (London, 19o4; enlarged 1908).

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