"Starring in the provinces"
was not an early occupation of the players of good repute. As a rule,
it was only the inferior actors who quitted town, and as Dekker
contemptuously says, "travelled upon the hard hoof from village to
village for cheese and buttermilk." "How chances it they travel?"
inquires Hamlet concerning "the tragedians of the city"--"their
_residence_ both in reputation and profit were better both ways." John
Stephens, writing in 1615, and describing "a common player," observes,
"I prefix the epithet 'common' to distinguish the base and artless
appendants of our City companies, which oftentimes start away into
rustical wanderings, and then, like Proteus, start back again into
the City number." The strollers were of two classes, however. First,
the theatrical companies protected by some great personage, wearing
his badge or crest, and styling themselves his "servants"--just as to
this day the Drury Lane troop, under warrant of Davenant's patent,
still boast the title of "Her Majesty's Servants"--who attended at
country seats, and gave representations at the request or by the
permission of the great people of the neighbourhood; and secondly, the
mere unauthorised itinerants, with no claim to distinction beyond such
as their own merits accorded to them, who played in barns, or in large
inn-yards and rooms, and against whom was especially levelled the Act
of Elizabeth declaring that all players, &c.
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