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Philip HensloweIn his lifetime, "Henslowe was spelled 'Henslowe' or 'Hinshley' (and variations thereof) with no apparent rhyme or reason. In a single document (the 1587 deed of partnership with John Cholmley) the name is spelled 'Hinshley,' 'Henslow,' and 'Hinshleye'; Henslowe himself sometimes signed his name 'Henslow,' sometimes 'Hensley'..." David Kathman. "The Spelling and Pronunciation of Shakespeare's Name: Pronunciation." ( – 6 January 1616) was an Elizabethan era theatrical entrepreneur and impresario. Henslowe's modern reputation rests on the survival of his diary, a primary source for information about the theatrical world of Renaissance London.
By the 1570s, Henslowe had moved to London, becoming a member of the Dyers' Company. Henslowe is recorded working as assistant to Henry Woodward, reputed to be the bailiff for Anthony Browne, 1st Viscount Montagu, owner of Cowdray House and Battle Abbey in Sussex. Henslowe married Woodward's widow, Agnes, and from 1577 lived in Southwark, opposite the Clink prison. His elder brother Edmund, a merchant, also owned property in Southwark. It was at one time assumed that his wife's inheritance gave Henslowe his start in business, but there is no evidence.
His success in business appears to have brought him some social prominence. By the early-17th century, he was a vestryman, churchwarden and overseer of the poor in St Saviour's ward in Southwark. During the reign of Elizabeth I, he was a Groom of the Chamber. Under James I, he served as a Gentleman Sewer of the Chamber. Henslowe also served as a collector of the Lay Subsidy.
Henslowe died in 1616 in London, still actively involved in the theatre.
In 1598 Burbage's company (by then, the Lord Chamberlain's Men) erected the new Globe Theatre in Bankside; Henslowe moved the Admiral's Men to the north-western corner of the city, into a venue he had financed, the Fortune Theatre. John Taylor, the "Water Poet", petitioned the King on behalf of the Watermen's Company, because of the expected loss of business transporting theatre patrons across the Thames.
He also had interests in the Newington Butts Theatre and The Swan Theatre in Southwark.
The diary is written on the reverse of pages of a book of accounts of his brother-in-law Ralf Hogge's ironworks, kept by his brother John Henslowe for the period 1576–1581. Hogge was the Queen's Gunstonemaker, and produced both iron cannon and shot for the Royal Armouries at the Tower of London. John Henslowe seems to have acted as his agent, and Philip prudently reused his old account book. These entries are a valuable source for the early iron-making industry.
The diary begins covering Henslowe's theatrical activities for 1592. Entries continue, with varying degrees of thoroughness (authors' names were not included before 1597), until 1609; in the years before his death, Henslowe appears to have run his theatrical interests from a greater distance. At some time after his death, his papers, including the diary, were transferred to Dulwich College, which Alleyn had founded.
Henslowe recorded payments to twenty-seven Elizabethan . He variously commissioned, bought and produced plays by, or made loans to Ben Jonson, Thomas Middleton, Henry Chettle, George Chapman, Thomas Dekker, John Webster, Anthony Munday, Henry Porter, John Day, John Marston and Michael Drayton. The diary shows the varying partnerships between writers, in an age when many plays were collaborations. It also shows Henslowe to have been a careful man of business, obtaining security in the form of rights to his authors' works, and holding their manuscripts, while tying them to him with loans and advances. If a play was successful, Henslowe would commission a sequel.
Performances of works with titles similar to Shakespearean plays, such as a Hamlet, a Henry VI, Part 1, a Henry V, a Taming of the Shrew and a Titus Andronicus are mentioned in the diary with no author listed. Most of these plays were recorded when the Admiral's Men and the Lord Chamberlain's Men briefly joined forces when the playhouses were closed owing to the plague (June 1594).
In 1599, Henslowe paid Dekker and Henry Chettle for a play called Troilus and Cressida, which is probably the play currently known from British Library Add MS 10449 (the actors' names that appear in the plot connect it to the Admiral's Men and date it between March 1598 and July 1600). There is no mention of William Shakespeare (or Christopher Marlowe, Robert Greene, Thomas Kyd or any University Wits writer, or figures like Richard Burbage for that matter) in Henslowe's diary (which prompted the forgeries of John Payne Collier); their absence is due to the fact that Shakespeare and Burbage were only connected to Henslowe's companies in the early 1590s before Henslowe records any authors. Shakespeare's company, the Lord Chamberlain's Men, performed at The Theatre (starting in 1594) and later The Globe Theatre (starting in 1599).
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