It is generally considered the second most important acting troupe of English Renaissance theatre (after the company of Shakespeare, the Lord Chamberlain's or King's Men).
Though there is little evidence that he was actively concerned with drama, Howard was almost alone among Elizabeth's closest councillors in opposing the Lord Mayor of London's 1584 drive to close the public theatres.
[citation needed] If the Admiral's Men were having difficulties in the city in this period, they were still welcome at Court (28 December 1589; 30 March 1590), and still popular in the towns and shires, where they toured more in 1589–90.
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.
(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.)
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.
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,[8] 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.
The company suffered a major set disaster when the Fortune Theatre burned down on 9 December 1621, destroying their stocks of playscripts and costumes.
In December 1631 the Fortune Theatre, vacated by the Admiral's/Palsgrave's company, received the King's Revels Men from the Salisbury Court for the next few years (1631–33).
[9] The Admiral's Men acted a huge repertory of plays during their long career; Henslowe's Diary lists dozens from the 1597–1603 period alone.