Who wrote for us

We know from Henslowe’s Diary that The Rose’s repertoire included Christopher Marlowe’s smash hits Tamburlaine, Doctor Faustus and The Jew of Malta, and Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy – the most popular and influential play of the entire Elizabethan period.

Doctor Faustus
by Christopher Marlowe
sixth quarto, 1620

The Spanish Tragedy
by Thomas Kyd
fifth quarto, 1615

A Knack to Know a Knave
author unknown
first quarto, 1594

Most of the hundreds of plays that were performed at The Rose are now lost, but just over thirty do survive in print, along with another twenty that were also probably or possibly acted there.

These include plays by other popular playwrights of the time, such as Robert Greene, George Peele, Thomas Lodge, and Thomas Nashe, all of whom wrote for The Rose in its first years.

These were, however, uncertain and dangerous times…

Robert Greene 'suited in death’s livery'
from Greene in Conceipt
by John Dickenson, 1598

In 1592, Greene managed to drink himself to death at the age of just 34, reportedly after a ‘surfeit of pickle herring and Rhenish wine’.

Marlowe was only 29 years old when, a year later in 1593, he was killed in mysterious circumstances, apparently stabbed to death during a knife fight in Deptford.

The following year, in 1594, Kyd died a broken man following likely imprisonment and torture as he was questioned about Marlowe, with whom he had shared a room and whose papers had been found with his. He was 35.

Peele was 40 years old when he died after being struck down with ‘the pox’ – another word for the plague – two years after that, in 1596.

In that same year, Lodge converted to Catholicism, eventually spending part of his life in exile abroad.

Thomas Nashe in chains
from The Trimming of Thomas Nashe
by Richard Lichfield, 1597

Nashe, who had turned most of his energies towards writing pamphlets and poems, only narrowly avoided prison after his play The Isle of Dogs was banned in 1597. By 1601 he too was dead, aged 33 or 34.

From 1596, Henslowe’s Diary records a new generation of young dramatists writing regularly for The Rose, often in collaboration with each other, in different combinations, two, three, or four at a time.

Michael Drayton
by unknown artist
oil on panel, 1599
NPG776 © National Portrait Gallery, London

Ben Jonson
by Abraham van Blyenberch
oil on canvas, circa 1617
NPG2752 © National Portrait Gallery, London

They included Michael Drayton, Thomas Dekker, Anthony Munday, Henry Chettle, Thomas Heywood, John Day, William Haughton, George Chapman, and Ben Jonson.

Together, they would go on to dominate the London stage for the next twenty years.

The Shoemakers Holiday
by Thomas Dekker
first quarto, 1600

A Woman Killed With Kindness
by Thomas Heywood
first quarto, 1607

Englishmen for my Money;
or A Woman will have her Will
by William Haughton
first quarto, 1616