an example.] (The players could defray some of their costs in the used clothing market. As an example, the King's Men bought discarded items of Gondomar's wardrobe for the actor playing the Black Knight in A Game at Chess. Often, "eminent lords and knights at their decease" would leave articles of their finery to their servants much of it "unseemly" for servingmen and women to wear. Such garments would end up the property of the actors.) A second major cost lay in play scripts. In the years around 1600, playwrights could be paid as little as £6 to £7 per play (or about the price of two suits). Yet since the companies acted a constantly changing repertory, they needed an abundant supply of plays. Philip Henslowe's Diary records dozens of titles for the 1597–1603 period; when Worcester's Men were setting up for their first London season in 1602, they purchased a dozen new plays from Henslowe's stable of house playwrights, to supplement their existing stock. The sharers in the company also paid wages to their hired men and boys. Wages differed somewhat over time and from company to company and case to case; but the general average minimum was 1 shilling per man per day, the same wage as that of an artisan worker. Boys cost perhaps half as much, though they were often maintained under some version of an apprenticeship arrangement, which could vary widely in details. Scheduling Performances at the public theatres were generally allowed six days per week; the theatres were closed on Sundays and major religious holidays like Good Friday. Other restrictions were laid upon the players, some of which they evaded as consistently as they could. They were supposed to cease playing entirely during Lent but violated this stricture regularly. In the spring of 1592, for example, the Lord Strange's Men played daily at the Rose Theatre right through Lent. After 1623, companies circumvented the Lenten restriction through the simple expedient of paying bribes to Sir Henry Herbert, the Master of the Revels. One restriction that the players observed, one that was too serious to violate, was the prohibition enforced whenever bubonic plague rose from endemic to epidemic levels. Through much of the English Renaissance period, the theatres were shut down when the death figures in the plague bill (the weekly mortality report for London and some suburban parishes) rose above a certain level. In