William Brooke, 10th Baron Cobham, had died…
July 1597 CE
William Brooke, 10th Baron Cobham, had died on March 5; his place as Lord Chamberlain has been taken by George Carey, 2nd Baron Hunsdon, the son of a previous Lord Chamberlain.
Lord Hunsdon has reversed Cobham's policy of hostility toward the actors of English Renaissance theater, and returned to his father's policy of general tolerance and patronage.
Henry IV, Part 1, a history play by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written no later than 1597, is the second play in Shakespeare's tetralogy dealing with the successive reigns of Richard II, Henry IV (2 plays), and Henry V. Henry IV, Part 1 depicts a span of history that begins with Hotspur's battle at Homildon against the Douglas late in 1402 and ends with the defeat of the rebels at Shrewsbury in the middle of 1403.
Henry IV was almost certainly in performance by 1597, given the wealth of allusions and references to the Falstaff character.
From the start it is an extremely popular play both with the public and the critics.
Pembroke's Men had contracted with Francis Langley in February to play the next year at his new Swan Theatre.
Their season goes disastrously wrong in July, when they stage the scandalous play The Isle of Dogs by Thomas Nashe and Ben Jonson: this provokes the authorities to close all of the London theaters for the remainder of the summer.
The play iis immediately suppressed, and no copy of it is known to exist.