It was during the later 1580s that the company established its long-term relationship with
Philip Henslowe, theatre builder, producer, impresario. Henslowe's
Rose Theatre was home to the Admiral's Men for a number of years, and Henslowe played a key role as a blend of manager and financier. After the major disruption of the 1592–94 era, when the public theatres endured a long closure due to
bubonic plague, the Admiral's Men entered another lush period in 1594 and after. The re-constituted company resumed performances on 14 May 1594, with
The Jew of Malta and two anonymous and lost plays, ''The Ranger's Comedy
and Cutlack''. The Admiral's Men had Edward Alleyn as their leading man; other personnel included George Attewell, Thomas Downton, and James Tunstall, all veterans of the earlier pre-1592 version of the Admiral's, and Richard Jones, a former mate of Alleyn's and Tunstall's in
Worcester's Men in the 1580s. (Jones and Downton would defect to
Pembroke's Men in early 1597, only to be caught up in their disastrous performance of
The Isle of Dogs, and return to the Admiral's by the end of that year.) Attewell was a "jigging" clown, known for his dancing; when
Richard Tarlton had died in 1588, Attewell had taken over the job of dancing a jig at the end of each performance of the
Queen Elizabeth's Men. John Singer, another clown with the Queen Elizabeth's company, also joined the Admiral's in 1594; other members included Edward Juby, Martin Slater, and Thomas Towne. The company's repertory came to feature plays by
George Chapman,
William Haughton, and
Anthony Munday, among many other poets. The survival of Henslowe's so-called
Diary (actually an account book kept by Henslowe and others in his organization) provides scholars with more detailed information about the Admiral's Men in this era than is available for any contemporaneous acting troupe. Among other points, the Diary illustrates the enormous demands the Elizabethan repertory system placed upon the actors. In the 1594–95 season, the Admiral's Men generally performed six days a week, and staged a total of 38 plays; 21 of these were new plays, introduced at a rate of approximately one every two weeks – but only eight were acted again in subsequent seasons. The next season, 1595–96, demanded 37 plays, including 19 new ones; and the following year, 1596–97, 34 plays, 14 new. The company consistently played the works of Marlowe throughout this era.
Tamburlaine Part 1 was acted 14 times in the 1594–95 season, followed by
Doctor Faustus (12 performances),
The Massacre at Paris (10),
The Jew of Malta (9), and
Tamburlaine Part 2 (6). Taken altogether, the most popular play over this 1594–97 period was the anonymous
The Wise Man of Westchester, which has not survived yet was acted 32 times over the three years, debuting on 3 December 1594 and last played on 18 July 1597. Earlier scholars speculated that it might be an alternative title for Anthony Munday's
John a Kent and John a Cumber, though no firm evidence supports this idea. Henslowe had interests in other theatres, including the
Fortune Theatre (built in 1600); the Admiral's Men moved into the new venue, and when the lease ran out on The Rose in 1605 it was abandoned. The company prospered, at least moderately, in its new location: in 1600 a share in the Admiral's Men (one out of a total of ten) was worth £50, while in 1613 a share (one of twelve) was valued at £70. Sometime in the winter of 1603–4, after the
House of Stuart succeeded to the throne of England, the Admiral's Men acquired a new patron,
Prince Henry (1594–1612), later the Prince of Wales (1610–12). Edward Alleyn retired from the stage in 1604, though he was involved with the company as their Fortune Theatre landlord. During this period their core cohort of players consisted of William Bird, Thomas Towne,
Samuel Rowley, Charles Massey,
Humphrey and Anthony Jeffes, Edward Juby, and Thomas Downton (who had been part of the 1597 production of
The Isle of Dogs). Edward Juby was the company's payee for Court performances, which suggests that he had significant responsibility for the troupe's finances. The company was known as Prince Henry's Men until the Henry's early death (6 November 1612), after which they came under the patronage of his new brother-in-law,
Frederick V, Elector Palatine. Their new patent of 11 January 1613 lists six of the actors of the previous decade, Juby, Bird, Rowley, Massey, Downton, and Humphrey Jeffes, plus six new sharers, who included
John Shank, later a long-time member of the King's Men, and
Richard Gunnell, who would become a theatre manager and impresario by building the
Salisbury Court Theatre with William Blagrave in 1629. ==Decline==