Shakespeare and the Earls of Derby

Ferdinando, Lord Strange, later 5th Earl of Derby (c.1559-94), was the patron of an acting company called Lord Strange’s Men, which was the most important group of players in Elizabethan England during the late 1580s and early 1590s. Six of the leading actors of the day were prominent in Lord Strange’s company – Edward Alleyn, George Brian, John Heminges, Augustine Phillipes, Thomas Pope and the great comic actor, William Kemp, who was very probably a member of the 4th Earl of Derby’s household. After the murder of the 5th Earl by arsenic poisoning in April 1594, five of these players became ‘sharers’ – or shareholders – in the newly formed leading acting company of the day, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men.

---

It was with this leading theatre troupe that the young William Shakespeare (1564-1616) gained vital experience by writing history plays and tragedies for public performance, including the Henry VI trilogy, Richard III and Titus Andronicus.

---

They were joined by William Shakespeare, by then a versatile actor, as well as a published poet and an up-and- coming playwright of distinction. After the death of Queen Elizabeth in 1603 and the accession to the English throne of King James VI of Scotland, these actors became The King’s Men. Shakespeare wrote many of his most famous plays for the Lord Chamberlain’s Men and then for The King’s Men; but beforehand he had already established his career as a playwright, working with most of the same actors, when they were part of the 5th Earl’s company of players.

It is also known from the surviving household book of William Farrington, the Steward to Henry, 4th Earl of Derby, that from the period 1586 to 1590 a number of leading English acting companies performed at both Knowsley and the family’s main residence at Lathom near Ormskirk. These companies included The Queen’s Men, as well as those of her two successive favourites, the Earl of Leicester and the Earl of Essex. Undoubtedly the house companies of Lord Derby’s players and Lord Strange’s men would have performed in the halls of these two great houses. It is highly likely that the young Shakespeare would have then gained intimate experience of Lord Derby’s very large household and the family’s skilled acting companies.

The Earls of Derby had a close interest in the manor of Prescot, the significant market and entertainment town, which is adjacent to one of the main entrances to the park at Knowsley (now the gateway to the Safari Park). The Earls kept a close eye on the governance of the manor and the town through their local stewards. In the mid-1590s a gentleman called Richard Harrington, whose brother Percival Harrington was then Steward of the town, built a small playhouse on the main street of the town (now Eccleston Street). This building, which operated as a theatre until at least 1617, is one of the very few purpose-built indoor theatres known to have been constructed outside London during the late Elizabethan and Jacobean period. It would have been used by touring acting companies that were visiting Knowsley Hall and other nearby locations in South Lancashire.

During 2016 two special events were organised at Knowsley to mark the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death. In the Summer, a sell-out performance of the sprightly comedy Much Ado About Nothing took place on the east lawn and terrace. In the Autumn a major symposium with leading international scholars was held in the Hall on the theme of ‘Shakespeare, the Earls of Derby and the North West’. That previous evening at the speakers’ dinner there was a staged reading of Sir Thomas Salusbury’s masque, which had last been performed at Knowsley Hall on Twelfth Night (6th January) 1641, on the eve of the Civil War. The text for this masque is littered with quotations from Shakespeare’s plays and constitutes a remarkable echo of the great playwright’s presence at Knowsley, deeply embedded in the households of the 4th, 5th and 6th Earls of Derby.