Henry Evans (theatre)

• 1. Introduction

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  Henry Evans, a Welsh scrivener born around 1543, built a career at the intersection of legal paperwork and theatrical ambition in Elizabethan London. Theatre historian David Grote describes him as "unsavoury" and "devious," a man who was not above kidnapping young boys to fill the stage at Blackfriars. How did a man of such questionable methods become a central figure in the story of English theatre? And what does his career tell us about the fragile, combative world in which Shakespeare himself operated? Those questions run through every chapter of Evans's life.

• 2. The First Blackfriars

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  In 1583, William Hunnis and John Newman transferred their sub-lease of property in the Blackfriars district to Evans. The owner, Sir William More, was actively trying to prevent the building from being used as a theatre, and the transfer appears to have been part of a complicated series of transactions designed to keep performances running despite that opposition. Evans did not work alone. He seems to have operated in close alliance with the playwright John Lyly and Lyly's patron Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford. Together they organised and co-ordinated the activities of the Children of the Chapel and the Children of Paul's during a short period running from 1583 to 1584. More eventually prevailed, regaining control of the building and stopping performances in 1584. Within a year, Evans had reappeared in a new role: in 1585 he was head of the Earl of Oxford's Boys at court. Scholars have also raised the possibility that Evans wrote the play the Famous Victories of Henry V during this period. That work is now recognised as one of the principal models for Shakespeare's later plays on the life of Henry, though the question of its authorship remains unresolved.

• 3. Boys as a Business Model

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  In 1599, Evans obtained the Blackfriars lease for a second time, this time in partnership with musician Nathaniel Giles. The building had been acquired by James Burbage, father of Richard and Cuthbert, back in 1596, but wealthy local citizens had successfully petitioned to block its use as a theatre. It had sat empty for several years by the time Evans and Giles arrived. Evans's plan turned on a legal fiction. By installing young "choristers" and reserving part of the building for their education, he could argue that the theatre was legally a school, one in which plays happened to be performed. His business partner Giles had succeeded Hunnis at the Chapel Royal and held a royal warrant to recruit performers for the queen's entertainment. Evans used that warrant as cover, supplementing his choristers by drawing talented children from local grammar schools. In 1600, the father of one such child attempted to sue Evans for forcing his son to join the Blackfriars troupe. The lawsuit did not stop the operation, but it left a clear record of the methods Evans was willing to employ.

• 4. Financial Strain and Shifting Partners

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  By April 1602 the Blackfriars enterprise was in financial difficulty. Evans accepted a deal he had backed out of just months earlier, ceding half ownership of the company to three new partners: William Rastell, Edward Kirkham, and Thomas Kendall. In exchange he received an injection of capital. When plague struck the following year, Evans tried to surrender the lease entirely, but the Burbages refused to release him from the contract. He then ceded the remaining half of his ownership to three further partners: the playwright John Marston, William Strachey, and his own wife. The company that emerged from these transactions was a patchwork of obligations and competing interests, a structure that would eventually collapse under external pressure.

• 5. A Diplomatic Crisis Ends It

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  The blow that finished Evans's second run at Blackfriars came from an unexpected direction. In 1608, the French ambassador Antoine Lefèvre de la Boderie complained to King James I about productions of plays by George Chapman. The productions allegedly treated the French court with disrespect. The ambassador also reported that another play depicted a Scottish mine, and that James himself was portrayed in it as a drunk. James was incensed. He ordered that the Blackfriars children should "never play more, but should first begg their bread." Evans was forced to turn the lease back to the Burbages later that same year. They took it up for their own company, the King's Men. The settlement gave Henry's relative Thomas Evans one share in the new partnership, with the remaining six shares going to King's Men members including the Burbages and Shakespeare. Two of Evans's old partners then pursued a protracted lawsuit against him, claiming he had breached their agreement. Henry is listed as the sharer in later cases from 1610 and 1612.

• 6. Shadow Over Shakespeare

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  Scholars have noted that Evans's company of boys was widely seen as a rival to the King's Men, a tension that appears to surface in Hamlet. Yet the relationship between Evans and the Burbages was not purely adversarial. Income from the 1599 lease helped to keep the Globe Theatre financially stable at a time when takings were limited and the Burbages were carrying heavy repayments on loans taken out to build and maintain it. David Grote's summary of the record is pointed: Evans "was devious or incompetent even by Elizabethan standards," and yet the Burbages appear to have trusted him anyway. When Evans finally surrendered the lease and the King's Men moved into Blackfriars, Shakespeare's plays begin to show significant changes in structure and style, adapting to the indoor theatre and its more select audience. That shift, one of the most discussed transitions in the Shakespearean canon, was partly made possible by the messy, litigious career of a Welsh scrivener who first put the Blackfriars stage to use.