One of the most intriguing metatheatrical episodes in the Shakespeare canon is the discussion of contemporaneous events in what is customarily referred to as the ‘little eyases’ passage published in the First Folio version of Hamlet. 1 Here, in a perplexing phrase, answering Hamlet’s inquiry as to why ‘the tragedians of the city’ have had to travel to Elsinore, ‘since their residence, both in reputation and profit, was better both ways’, Rosencrantz replies: ‘I thinke their Inhibition comes by the meanes of the late Innovation’ (TLN 1389–90). In her essay ‘Falconer to the Little Eyases’, a slightly revised version of which appears as Chapter 5 of Playing Companies and Commerce in...