Shakespeare’s Royal Patron Shakespeare’s Royal Patron Author Kate McPherson Copy Editor Leah Hamby Senior Encoder Leah Hamby Encoding and Metadata LEMDO Team Copyright Holder (Content) Kate McPherson Copyright Holder (XML and interface) University of Victoria Early Modern England Encyclopedia EMEE

Anthology Leads: Kate McPherson and Kate Moncrief.

 Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Mitacs Globalink Research Internship Utah Valley University

Released with Early Modern England Encyclopedia 1.0a

 University of Victoria on the Linked Early Modern Drama Online Platform

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Early Modern England Encyclopedia

By Kate McPherson, inspired by Michael Best’s Shakespeare’s Life and Times, Internet Shakespeare Editions

Encoded in TEI P5 according to the LEMDO Customization and Encoding Guidelines

This document uses Canadian English spelling

 Document Types All documents in LEMDO are either born-digital documents or primary documents. Within those two general categories, LEMDO offers additional ways to categorize a file. Born-digital Born-digital documents are anything other than primary texts Critical Critical material, such as a general introduction or a textual introduction. Responsibilities Responsibilities Author A person, family, or organization responsible for creating a work that is primarily textual in content, regardless of media type (e.g., printed text, spoken word, electronic text, tactile text) or genre (e.g., poems, novels, screenplays, blogs). Use also for persons, etc., creating a new work by paraphrasing, rewriting, or adapting works by another creator such that the modification has substantially changed the nature and content of the original or changed the medium of expression. LEMDO uses the term author in two contexts: (1) to indicate the author of a primary work or document (such as Hamlet), and (2) to indicate the author of a secondary text (such as the Critical Introduction to <title level="m">Hamlet, by David Bevington). Copy Editor LEMDO uses the term owner for the person who checks facts, quotations, and citations; may make formatting changes; may convert from one citation style to another; may suggest wording changes; and enforces conformity with the project style guide. Markup Editor A person or organization performing the coding of SGML, HTML, or XML markup of metadata, text, etc. Gloss needed. Copyright Holder A person or organization to whom copy and legal rights have been granted or transferred for the intellectual content of a work. The copyright holder, although not necessarily the creator of the work, usually has the exclusive right to benefit financially from the sale and use of the work to which the associated copyright protection applies. Normally the editor is the copyright holder for an LEMDO edition. EMEE Keywords Culture Learn about the customs, beliefs, and daily lives of people in early modern England. Daily Life Christmas Literature and the Arts Patronage Published file. Updated metadata proofed Created File Michael Best Michael Best

Michael Best is Professor Emeritus at the University of Victoria, BC. He founded the Internet Shakespeare Editions in 1996, and was Coordinating Editor until 2017, contributing two editions to the ISE: King John and King Lear (the latter also available in print from Broadview Press). In print, he has published editions of works of Elizabethan magic and huswifery, a collection of letters from the Australian goldfields, and Shakespeare on the Art of Love (2008). He contributed regular columns for the Shakespeare Newsletter on Electronic Shakespeares, and has written many articles and chapters for both print and online books and journals, principally on questions raised by the new medium in the editing and publication of texts. He has delivered papers and plenary lectures on electronic media and the Internet Shakespeare Editions at conferences in Canada, the USA, the UK, Spain, Australia, and Japan.

 Leah Hamby Leah Hamby

Leah Hamby is the primary encoder for the Early Modern England Encyclopedia. Aside from encoding, she also works as an editor for the project and contributed several articles of her own. She has been working on the EMEE since February 2023. As of February 2026, she is soon to graduate with honours from Utah Valley University with a major in history and a minor in creative writing. Her other work with the LEMDO program includes remediating William Kemp’s Kemp’s Nine Day’s Wonder for the Digital Renaissance Editions.

 Navarra Houldin Navarra Houldin

Training and Documentation Lead 2025–present. LEMDO project manager 2022–2025. Textual remediator 2021–present. Navarra Houldin (they/them) completed their BA with a major in history and minor in Spanish at the University of Victoria in 2022. Their primary research was on gender and sexuality in early modern Europe and Latin America. They are continuing their education through an MA program in Gender and Social Justice Studies at the University of Alberta where they will specialize in Digital Humanities.

 Kate McPherson Kate McPherson

Kate McPherson is Professor of English and Honors Program Director at Utah Valley University (Orem, UT, USA). In 2015, she began working to redevelop Shakespeare’s Life and Times, created by Michael Best, into the Early Modern England Encyclopedia. Her other publications include commentary on Pericles and The Comedy of Errors for the New Oxford Shakespeare (2016); the co-edited volumes Stages of Engagement: Drama and Religion in Post-Reformation England with James Mardock (Duquesne University Press, 2014) and Shakespeare Expressed: Page, Stage, and Classroom in Shakespeare and His Contemporaries, with Kathryn M. Moncrief and Sarah Enloe (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2013). With Kathryn M. Moncrief, Kate has also two edited collections, Performing Pedagogy in Early Modern England: Gender, Instruction, and Performance (Ashgate, 2011) and Performing Maternity in Early Modern England (Ashgate 2008). She has also published numerous articles on early modern maternity in scholarly journals. Kate participated in the 2008 National Endowment for the Humanities Institute, Shakespeare’s Blackfriars: The Study, the Stage, the Classroom, at the American Shakespeare Center. She also served as Play Seminar Director, a public humanities position, for the Utah Shakespeare Festival in 2017 and 2018.

 LEMDO Team The LEMDO Team is based at the University of Victoria and normally comprises the project director, the lead developer, project manager, junior developers(s), remediators, encoders, and remediating editors. University of Victoria https://www.uvic.ca/
A portrait of James I, dressed in an outfit of black, red, white, and gold. He wears a black, wide-brimmed hat with jewels decorating it. A portrait of James I, c. 1605. After John de Critz (d.1641). Courtesy of Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna via Wikimedia Commons. Public Domain.
James I Creates The King’s Men

On March 25, 1603, following the death of Queen Elizabeth the previous day, King James VI of Scotland also became King James I of England. Shortly after his arrival in London in May 1603, James I granted a formal patent transforming the Lord Chamberlain’s Men into the King’s Men. Both prestige and profit increased for the theater company, William Shakespeare included.

The King’s Men and the Coronation of James I of England

James I was not formally crowned king until nearly a year later due to the long progress (a formal royal journey with many stops at the houses of nobles) from Edinburgh to London, combined with a severe outbreak of the plague in London. To prepare for his coronation, more than 1000 royal servants, including members of the King’s Men, were given the substantial sum £4 each to buy expensive scarlet cloth for a formal uniform for the procession.

Royal Patrons of the Theater

The King’s household (King James, Queen Anna of Denmark, and their son Prince Henry) each sponsored their own theater companies in London and were enthusiastic audience members at court performances. The leading players from those three companies are listed by name in a document recording the issuing of coronation cloth. The charter lists 28 players, with the leading player or shareholder listed first. William Shakespeare’s name appears second in the list, indicating he was among the chief sharers in the newly named King’s Men.

The coronation was an occasion that demanded extensive civic pageantry. Other playwrights and poets of the time such as Ben Jonson and Thomas Dekker helped create pageants (short performances) along the coronation route, but apparently James rushed past many of them in his eagerness to be formally crowned in Westminster Abbey.

The King’s Men worked hard after receiving royal patronage, performing nightly for the court at Hampton Court Palace during Christmas festivities in 1603, in addition to other private performances for the royal family. By 1604, The King’s Men were performing plays that connected with James I’s interests, such as Measure for Measure, which deals with the ruler’s responsibilities to the people and the moral improvement of a city.

The Royal Patent

The Records of the Lord Chancellor contains a document granting Shakespeare’s company the right to perform under patronage of the king throughout the realm. A modern-spelling transcription of that royal patent reads: To all Justices, Mayors, Sheriffs, Constables, Headboroughs, and other our officers and loving subjects, Greeting. Know ye that we of our special grace, certain knowledge, and mere motion, have licensed and authorized, and by these present do license and authorize, these our servants Lawrence Fletcher, William Shakespeare, Richard Burbage, Augustine Phillipps, John Hennings, Henry Condell, William Sly, Robert Armyn, Richard Cowley, and the rest of their associates freely to use and exercise the art and faculty of playing comedies, tragedies, histories, interludes, morals, pastorals, stage plays, and such other like as they have already studied or hereafter shall use or study, as well for the recreation of our loving subjects as for our solace and pleasure when we shall think good to see them during our pleasure. (Nelson)

The document goes on to allow the King’s Men to perform outside of London when the theaters are closed due to plague. Another privilege came to Shakespeare as part of this royal patent: along with the other sharers in The King’s Men, Shakespeare became a Groom Extraordinary of the Chamber (a largely ceremonial post as a minor courtier), although The King’s Men did serve as attendants to the Spanish Ambassador when he visited the English court in 1604.

Key Print Sources Potter, Lois.The Life of William Shakespeare: A Critical Biography. Wiley-Blackwell, 2012. Range, Matthias. Music and Ceremonial at British Coronations: From James I to Elizabeth II. Cambridge University Press, 2012.
Key Online Sources Archer, Ian. Interview by Paulina Kewes. The Royal Entry of James I 1604. Stuarts Online. https://stuarts-online.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/1604.pdf. Accessed 25 Jul. 2025. Best, Michael. A Royal Patron, James I. Shakespeare’s Life and Times. Internet Shakespeare Editions, https://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Library/SLT/life/maturity/kingsmen.html. Accessed 11 Feb. 2026. Caldicott, Joshua. From Foreign Enemy to Great Unifying Leader: Performances of King James VI and I between 1599 and 1624 in the Works of Ben Jonson and William Shakespeare. Innvervate vol. 9, 2016–2017, pp. 167–172. University of Nottingham. https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/english/documents/innervate/16-17/19.-caldicott-j-q33398.pdf. Nelson, Alan H.. King James Establishes the King’s Men: Warrant Under Privy Seal.. Shakespeare Documented. The Folger Shakespeare Library, https://shakespearedocumented.folger.edu/resource/document/king-james-establishes-kings-men-warrant-under-privy-seal..
Image Sources King James I (1566–1625) of England and Scotland, Half-Length Portrait. After 1605. Oil on canvas. Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna. https://www.khm.at/kunstwerke/koenig-jakob-i-1566-1625-von-england-und-schottland-brustbild-2438.