The Four Companies Under James

With the disappearance of the last of the boy companies and the recent merger of the two companies that were patronized by James’s younger children into one, four had become the set number of approved playing companies in London by 1615: King’s Men, Queen Anne’s, Palsgrave’s (formerly the Prince’s), and Prince Charles’s (I) Company. The shrinkage from six to four between 1613 and 1615 was due to more factors than the economic pressure of the attempt to increase the supply of plays to the same-sized market of playgoers. It was also a question of the places available to play in. By 1615 there were barely four playhouses even for the four companies that were then in operation in London, and the city was not going to relent in its hostility to the building of new playhouses. All the London companies saw what James Burbage had envisaged first in 1596: that the future lay in enclosed theatres.